The icon ‘Spiritual Labyrinth’ belongs to the so-called symbolic-didactic trend in icon painting. It developed in the Russian religious art in the XVI century. Icons of this type are usually related to the interpretation of theological literature and are of an edifying nature.

Inside the labyrinth is a circle where the painter shows the beginning and end of human life. On the left, the master portrayed a newborn in a cradle, who the death wants to take away. A dead person is lying on the right. His soul is accepted by an angel, but next to him stands a demon holding the list of his sins. The earthly course of a Christian is symbolized by a ladder: a man and a woman are walking on it. In the beginning they are children, and on the last step already very old people, signatures above the characters spell their age — from one to ninety years. In terms of composition and arrangement of space, the icon is not quite canonical: the master used the technique of inverted perspective and painted remote objects larger.
In terms of its technique, this piece resembles a print or a book illustration, rather than an icon. The author painted the labyrinth very graphically, drawing a geometrically precise ornament. Also unlike traditional icons, the painter used a lot of text on the image, while in iconography words are of a secondary nature, used in accordance with canons. These features make the ‘Spiritual Labyrinth’ a unique piece of iconography.