Zhdan Dementiev, 1630

Copy

‘The Paternity’ image shows God the Father (Lord Sabaoth) as an old man seated on a throne and making a blessing with his two hands, Christ Immanuel seated on his lap, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove over Christ’s head in the blue sphere. The margins, the background of the icon, a part of the Sabaoth’s halo and the Christ’s halo are decorated with a copper cover with stamping. 

This icon type of God the Father depicted as an old man, God the Son as Immanuel (the youthful Christ) and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove is very common in Eastern Orthodoxy, and it is the ‘New Testament Trinity’ or ‘Paternity.’ The main idea of this iconography is to underline the consubstantiality of all three images (hypostases) of the Trinity.

Such icons of the Trinity were prohibited at the Great Synod of Moscow in 1667, but in spite of this decision, they were painted till the 19th-20th centuries.

The icon was restored by the team of I.P. Yaroslavtsev in the Inter-Regional Special Scientific Restoration Workshop of the Rosrestavratsiya Association in the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR in 1978-1979.