The Venerable Macarius of the Yellow Water Lake and the Unzha is so called after the areas where he founded two of the three monasteries in honor of the Most Holy Trinity. The saint was forced to leave the first one, on the Yellow Water Lake near Nizhny Novgorod, when the Tatars seized that territory. He died in 1444 in the second monastery, on the Unzha River.

All his life, the monk, burdened by worldly fame, sought solitude, but never refused to take care of those who sought his patronage — both during his lifetime and after his death. Patriarch Filaret, the father of Tsar Michael I, credited his rescue from Polish captivity in 1619 to the saint’s intercession. This story gave impetus to the canonization and all-Russian veneration of Macarius.

His iconography, which had developed even before that time, began to develop rapidly. His images spread beyond Moscow and the Volga region.

The local, Kargopol veneration of the saint is connected with his miraculous image. Legend has it that in 1632, the Venerable Alexander Oshevensky appeared in a dream to the priest of the Trinity Church, Father Gerasim Anfimov, and ordered to paint an icon of Macarius. When the image was painted and placed in the Oshevensky Monastery, the first miraculous healing took place there — a blind girl could see again.

It is believed that after leaving the Yellow Waters, Saint Macarius remained a hermit for some time on Lake Khergo. There monks Sergius and Longinus founded a new monastery, which was consecrated with the miraculous icon of the monk.

This image has not been preserved. It is known that it was small in size, framed, with 11 hagiographic scenes. In the centerpiece, the saint was depicted praying in the church, holding in his hand a scroll with a prayer for giving people daily bread. Often the Yellow Water Lake and Unzha monasteries were depicted at the feet of the monk.

In the presented image, Saint Macarius also stands in prayer to the Holy Trinity, but without churches and against the background of a landscape. Works made in the same manner, with a detailed, realistic landscape, became fashionable at the turn of the 18th century, first in the capital, and then in the provinces.

This style is more characteristic of the Volga masters than of Kargopol icon painters, who preferred a concise pictorial language and less details. Probably, the icon came to Kargopol from the Volga region, or a local icon painter worked with a Volga reference, diligently copying it in every detail.