The Virgin of Smolensk image belongs to Hodegetria type. This name originated from the name of an ancient Christian temple Odegon in Greece, where the first icon of this type was found. The author of the book about the lives of saints Hagiography Dmitry Rostovsky believed that the very first Hodegetria was painted by Luca the Evangelist on the commission by bishop Theophilus of Antioch.

In those years, our ancestors created icons in several stages. First, they dried the wood, then split the logs and cut wooden bases of future icons. They used non-torch wood: lime, alder, imported cypress, but sometimes also softwood. Usually, specialized craftsmen prepared the boards for future icons, they were called levkas coaters. They glued special linen fabric on the face side of the board. On the next stage they covered this fabric with several layers of levkas — a special chalk solution. When levkas dried, it was polished with stems of horsetail grass, and then the iconographers painted images with tempera. This paint consisted of powder pigment and egg yolk, later they started adding boiled flaxseed oil or lacquer. Sometimes icons were covered with gold leaf. Such covers would often close not just the frame, but the background between the main figures.

The icon of The Virgin Hodegetria of Smolensk from the collection of Khanty-Mansiysk State Museum of Fine Arts was painted in the second half of the 16th century. It was kept in different churches of the Volga River region for several ages. The Generations Fund of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous District acquired it at the end of the 20th century, and in 2011, it passed the icon to the museum collection.