Past Exhibitions

A stunning, major exhibition of 37 paintings and artifacts from Moscow’s Andrey Rublev Museum—most never shown before in the U.S. The Andrey Rublev Museum, located in the historic Spaso-Andronikov Monastery, is home to one of Russia’s most prominent collections of icons and is named after the legendary icon painter Andrey Rublev.

Like Michelangelo, his Italian Renaissance counterpart of a few decades later, Andrey Rublev is considered to be the greatest fresco painter of his era – as well as the greatest painter of Russian Orthodox icons. Born in the 1360s, his art combined the two traditions of austere asceticism and Byzantine mannerism, rocketing his charismatic style to stardom as the ideal of church painting and iconography. He died at Spaso-Andronikov Monastery, where he painted his last work, the frescoes of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, built sometime between 1410 and 1427.

Perhaps the most dramatic showstopper in the exhibition is the monumental, 57” x 46”, Old Testament Trinity, (above) circa late 15th – early 16th century, originating from the Trinity Church of the village of Magic Mountain of the Uglich region, Yaroslavl area. The subject matter of the icon is based on Chapter XVIII of the Book of Genesis, which describes how God appeared to Abraham in the form of three traveling angels. The icon’s composition in many ways strongly resembles the famous image painted by Andrey Rublev around 1409-1425 as a church image in the Trinity Cathedral of the Troitse-Sergiev Monastery.