The type of icon Mother of God Hodigitria originated in the 1st century AD. According to the legend, it was painted by apostle Luke for bishop Theophilus of Antioquia. The name of the icon is associated with the ancient Christian temple Hodigon in Greece, where the first image of this type was found. Hodigitria translates from Greek as the Wayfinder. 

The ancient sacred image was called Georgian because it had first been discovered in Georgia. In 1622 when that country was occupied by Shah Abbas, the icon was taken to Persia. There the icon was bought by Russian merchant Stefan Lazarev and brought back home. The image was transferred to the Chernogorsky Monastery near Arkhangelsk. Local masters began to make copies of it. Researchers suggest that one of such copies served as a model for the Rybinsk Museum icon. 

The icon was painted on a wooden basis with a small ark - a rectangular recess for the main image. The wood is covered with several layers of glue and canvas - cloth of rare weaving. On top of it they applied special compound - a mixture of glue and chalk, and polished it. 

The clothes of the Mother of God and of Jesus are painted with cinnabar and carmine. They obtained saturated red pigment for cinnabar from the eponymous mercury mineral, and scarlet carmine - from cochineal - insects, which were called just worms in Russia. The masters highlighted illuminated parts of the clothes with ochre - paint based on rust and clay. In order to get a light shade, they diluted ochre with whitewash. Along the edges of the maphorion of the Mother of God the icon painters drew fine lace.

Faces were traditionally painted with different shades of ochre. To give relative volume to the image they first applied a layer of dark ochre, and then covered light-toned parts of the faces with light shades of ochre.