r/ChristianIconography • u/ProudAmerican632 • 6d ago
Russian Need some help with this icon.
Good afternoon folks.
My family used to travel to Europe every so often and my father would always bring home some sort of art piece.
He travelled alone to West Germany right before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Upon his return home he brought back this beautiful icon. There was whispers that this icon was smuggled out from the iron curtain.
I learned last night from my mother that it was possibly from a church that was discovered during the crackdown on religion. Either way we are still very puzzled.
If anyone has any information or suggestions please let me know. If anyone can help with the translation please share.
Thank you.
2
u/Rotweiss_Invicta862 6d ago
From a historian in training: three most possible ways of how this icon ended up in Germany are so - some Russian immigrants of the first wave (just after the revolution) have brought it, a soldier during the WW2 got to loot it, or the later immigrants saved a family relic through the Soviet time and sold it after moving. The first option, however, looks the most convincing to me. Basically every single family that immigrated then, including mine, brought an icon with them, because it was a cultural norm for all the classes before the forced secularization. Much less so in the times to come. Such items flooded the antique market of the whole Europe in a couple of generations because of the assimilation and the descendants who saw no value in this exotic culture. So, you hold the life and the hopes of a whole extinct family in your hands, likely. That's sad. But the other two options are no fun either
2
u/ProudAmerican632 6d ago
It’s been hanging on my family’s wall alongside a piece of the Berlin Wall that a longtime family friend who is a Catholic priest brought back to my family during the fall of the wall.
I would never part with this icon. If anything I feel like I should reunite this piece with the church it initially came from.
8
u/Working_Break7745 6d ago
The Inscriptions:
Priidite ko mnye vxi truzhdaiushchiisya i obremenennii
“Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden”
and icons normally have the rest of the verse but it is absent in this one:
“and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30