Exhibition MIRACLE KAZAN IMAGE OF THE GOD OF MOTHER KAZAN BOGORODITSKY MONASTERY

A unique event in the cultural space of Russia and the Republic of Tatarstan is the scientific and exhibition project “The Miraculous Kazan Image of Our Lady. Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery ”opens in the main building of the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan. It is dedicated to the celebration of the appearance of the Kazan Icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary (July 21) and the laying of a memorial stone at the site of the revived Kazan Cathedral in the Bogoroditsky monastery of Kazan. This is a joint project of the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan, the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the N. I. Lobachevsky Scientific Library, KFU Museums, the National Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan and private collections from Kazan.

During the exhibition, July 19-20, 2016, the Pushkin Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan will host one of the sections of the International Scientific and Practical Conference “The Miraculous Kazan Image of the Virgin in the Fates of Russia and World Civilization”.

For the visitors of the museum for three months there is a unique opportunity to see treasures and rarities: works of ancient Russian painting, graphic art, arts and crafts, art photography of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. For the first time at a single exhibition site, ancient monuments of artistic culture and spiritual shrines of the Kazan Theotokos Monastery and Kazan Diocese are exhibited, dedicated to the glorification of the Miraculous Kazan Icon of the Virgin. For the first time after the restoration, ancient lists of the last quarter of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries are presented from the original image of the Virgin, revealed on July 8 (21), 1579 in Kazan. Among the lists from the Miraculous Image of the Virgin, rarities from the collections of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church and the Old Believer community of the Old Pomor consent are presented.

Ancient monuments of art culture convey the spiritual atmosphere of the second half of the 16th century. Significant images of the Mother of God: the Most Blessed (Pammakarista) from the collection of NM RT, Iverskaya ("Goalkeeper") from the collection of the Pushkin Museum of the RT, as well as gilded silver robe - a salary from the Miraculous Kazan Icon of the Virgin from the collection of NM RT for the first time exhibited together as special shrines of the Kazan Theotokos Monastery. A holistic and large-scale representative collection of icons in precious salaries and works of decorative and applied art from Kazan private collections represents the image of the Kazan Mother of God in variously revered lists of the Miraculous Icon distributed throughout Russia. For the first time, icons created in the painting workshop of the Kazan Mother of God Monastery (1867-1928), which was a major center of icon painting, are exhibited. The exposition is complemented by a collection of minerals from the A. A. Shtukenberg Geological Museum of Kazan University.

For the first time, unique historical and memorial materials are exhibited at the exhibition: unique works on the history of the monastery and publication of documents of the trial on the case of the abduction of the manifest miraculous icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, architectural drawings, graphic sheets, photographs and phototypes related to the construction and life of the monastery and are inextricably intertwined with the history of the life of the miraculous image of the Mother of God.

The exhibition is the result of many years of scientific and restoration work of museum staff and the experience of collecting activities of one private collection. The abundance of iconographic material, the wide coverage of the territory of Kazan icons, allows you to make the first major exhibition on the history of the glorification of the Kazan image of the Virgin and the place of the appearance of the Miracle-working icon in the revived monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a vivid manifestation in the cultural life of the Republic of Tatarstan and all of Russia.