Saint Nicholas of Myra, also known as Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, is one of the most revered Christian saints.He used to be an archbishop in the Roman city of Myra in the third century AD and, according to his hagiography, he cured the sick and saved condemned innocent people from the execution. Saint Nicholas of Myra suffered for the Faith during the severe Anti-Christian persecution of the Roman emperors Diocletian and Maximian.

The iconographic type of St. Nicholas of Myra has been known since the 10th century. The Saint’s hagiography describes an episode that took place at the First Council of Nicaea. The Wonderworker slapped on the face a heretic named Arius, who was the founder of a religious doctrine called Arianism that did not acknowledge the triunity of God. Although the Council of Nicaea condemned Arianism, Saint Nicholas was defrocked and sent to prison for that incident. But, according to the legend, Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ appeared to him and restored to him all the attributes of the bishop: the omophorion (a scarf with crosses) and the Gospel. According to the tradition, the images of Christ and the Virgin were painted in the upper (‘Heaven’) part of the icon.

The icon from the collection of the Rybinsk Museum Reserve was created in the decade of 1770 by Old Belief artists from the town of Romanov-Borisoglebsk, today called Tutaev. The Romanov school of iconography was known for a refined painting style, the combination of mint green and coral pink shades and skillful gilding of the highlighted parts of depicted figures. Unlike artists that painted in other styles, the painters of the Romanov school did not imitate the Western European manner but developed the ancient Russian painting technique.