The story of how the image of Jesus Christ not-made-by-hands came into being is described in the Apocrypha of the 4th – 5th centuries - this is the name of the texts that have not been included in the Canon, but do not contradict the Bible. 

The icon The Saviour, Image Not-Made-by-Hands from the collection of the Rybinsk Museum Reserve had been painted before 1630. It belonged to the noble family of Mikhalkovs. An approximate age of the icon was identified with the help of the dedicatory inscription on its back, which was made in the 19th century, This way I, Vladimir Mikhalkov, blessed my son Sergei on August the 29th, 1881. This image had belonged to Konstantin Mikhalkov, stolnik [cup-bearer] and postelnichy [chamberlain]. Konstantin Ivanovich Mikhalkov attended on Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov and died shortly before 1630, which was certified with a record in the paying-in book of the Holy Trinity and St. Sergius Monastery where 300 roubles were paid for the repose of the soul of Mikhalkov.  

Probably, the icon was painted by Moscow artists. Harmonious asymmetry, a special form of the nose and eyes looking aside are characteristic features of images painted in Moscow in the 16th century. One can tell a painter from the capital, a royal artist, perhaps, by the skillful inscription in Greek, “Τω ΑΓΗΟΝ ΜΑΝΔΗΛΙωΝ” (Holy Ubrus).

The gilded silver cover of the icon was supposedly ordered in Novgorod. Its ornament is similar to the patterns on the Novgorod cover of the icon of the Saviour the Almighty from the collection of Pavel Korin, icon-painter and restoration artist of the 20th century.