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Keywords
icon painting, the Urals, Abalak Icon, Abalak Mother of God, Our Lady of the Sign, Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery, Znamensky Skete, Sister Angelina, Byzantine style
Categories
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
Popova, K. (2026) ‘Journey from the Urals to Siberia: dating and attribution of the Skete-Abalak icon of the Mother of God of the Sign by Sister Angelina’, The Art of Eurasia, (1), pp. 38–53. doi:10.46748/ARTEURAS.2026.01.002.
Индексация статей
Abstract
The article examines a copy of one of Siberia’s most venerated miraculous icons, the Skete-Abalak Mother of God of the Sign (Skitskaya-Abalakskaya Znamenie), from the collection of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum of Local Lore. The icon is currently located in the Znamensky Skete in Divnogorsk. The scientific study, dating, and attribution of this monument have not yet been addressed. However, the use of archival sources and publications allowed for this gap to be filled and the icon’s provenance from the icon-painting workshop of the Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery in Ekaterinburg to be confirmed. Furthermore, the identity of the author was established as Sister Angelina, including her secular name and biographical details. This monument is examined in the context of its time, as it was executed in the Byzantine style, which was considered progressive for the second half of the 19th century. This style represents a symbiosis of academic art and traditional icon painting. The analysis of the monument allowed for the differences between this copy and the original to be determined, while also addressing the problem of likeness in icon painting. It was established that by the end of the 19th century, the icon-painting workshop of the Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery had attained a high level of professionalism. This is evident in the Skitskaya-Abalatskaya icon, a high-quality work of pictorial art that could not have been created without a strong foundation of skill and expertise.
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