Real encounter

Origin: Russia
Age: XIXth Century
Composition: Gold sheet, tempera on wood
Measures Cms: 40,0 X 33,3 X 2,4

Copies of this icon appeared in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. On 11 June of the year 980 a stranger abducted a novice of his secular cell on the holy mountain of Athos staying with him all night. During her prayer, the novice was to sing the traditional anthem Theotokos, “more Honorable than the Cherubim,” suddenly someone started to sing a new hymn beginning “is a real… adding more honorable than the Cherubim encounter”. She wrote these words with her finger on a stone and said that from that day has to be singed like this. He presented himself as the Archangel Gabriel and departed.