“Christ in the Dungeon”, also known as “Midnight Savior”, is a wooden statue depicting Jesus Christ in the dungeon after being tortured, shortly before crucifixion. Such religious statues appeared in Russian churches only in the 17th–18th centuries and became widespread in the 18th–19th centuries. They were popular in the agricultural regions of the Volga Region and the Russian North, and among the Russian population of industrial towns in the Urals and Siberia.

Such sculpture reflects the revival of ancient traditions of three-dimensional carving and the interpretation of European artistic styles, such as Classicism and Baroque, in Russian art. The statue was usually placed in an improvised wooden dungeon inside a church.

The statue is a life-size figure of the Savior. “Christ in the Dungeon” stands out for its monumental scale, vivid imagery, and emotionality. Christ is portrayed naked, with the Crown of Thorns on His head, and blood dripping from beneath the thorns. His body position conveys suffering, with His ribs visible through His skin.

After being beaten and mocked, Christ spent a brief night in the dungeon between the evening inquest at Caiaphas’s palace and the morning visit to Pontius Pilate. This is how Boris Ilyich Gladkov interprets the Gospel story,

The museum exhibit was purchased from the village of Alamasovo, in the Voznesensky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, in 1966. The Voznesensky District borders the Arzamas District of the same region. Wooden statues like this were common in these areas.

While studying the 19th-century inventories of the Arzamas Uyezd, the art historian V.M. Shakhanova, noted that Archimandrite Macarius, who visited the parish churches in the Arzamas Uyezd in the mid-19th century, found only one wooden statue of “Christ in the Dungeon” in each parish. At the same time, there could be two churches in each parish. However, the village of Vyezdnaya Sloboda, which was owned by the Saltykov Counts, was an exception, as it had two such statues in two churches. Overall, Macarius found six such statues in the city of Arzamas and 45 throughout the Arzamas Uyezd.