The Terebinskaya icon of the Mother of God became famous in 1654. The Terebinsk Hermitage of St. Nicholas is located on the bank of the river Mologa (today’s village of Sloboda, Maksatikhinsky District). The monastery was founded in 1641 on the site of a wooden church that had been built in 1492 by a landowner Mikhail Obutkov in the village of Terebeni, in honor of St. Nicholas. Obutkov moved to the church his most valuable icons, including the Terebinskaya icon of the Mother of God and a miraculous icon of St. Nicholas. According to a different account, the icon appeared to a boy near the Terebinsk Monastery, from which it got its name. Two kilometers away from the monastery there is a rock with a footprint thereupon. There is a legend that the icon appeared near that rock.

The original Terebinsky icon of the Mother of God did not survive while its image is known from the existing copies. In this icon the Holy Mother of God is depicted at waist-length, with arms upraised in the pose of Oranta. The Infant Christ is shown at full-length standing on a globe with outspread arms. The icon became famous for its miracles, one of which was the salvation of Bezhetsk from cholera.

Zhanna G. Belik,

Ph.D. in Art history, senior research fellow at the Andrei Rublyov Museum, custodian of the tempera painting collection.

Olga E. Savchenko,

research fellow at the Andrei Rublyov Museum.

Bibliography:

1. Николаевская Теребенская пустынь. Историческое описание. СПб., 2003.

2. Теребенская Николаевская пустынь // Тверская область. М., 1994.

3. Теребинская икона Божией Матери