St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas of Mozhaysk The image of St. Nicholas with a sword in his right hand and a silhouette of a church or a defence fort in his left is known since the 14th c. Tradition connects its creation to Mozhaysk, located around 100km west of Moscow. During the Mongol invasion in the 13th c., Mozhaysk avoided capture and destruction by Batu Khan's troops. The legend of the saving of the city credits the miraculous revelation of St. Nicholas before the praying inhabitants of the fort. The usually benevolent and gentle Nicholas the Wonderworker appeared in his full form as a formidable defender, holding up a sword in his right hand and a walled fort in his left. This sight frightened the enemies, who fled, and the rescued inhabitants made a carved depiction of the saint, placing it in a new brick church. Another version of the story says that the sculpture of St. Nicholas, carried onto the city walls, saved the city from enemy invasion. The St. Nicholas sculpture, which comes from the end of the 14th c. at the earliest, became an object of pilgrimages and contributed to the development of the cult of the saint in Mozhaysk (currently, the original sculpture is housed in the Orthodox church art collection in the Hermitage Museum). However, the sculpture was only called Saint Nicholas of Mozhaysk for the first time in city records from the 16th c., to distinguish it from other depictions of the saint. In icon painting, the portrayal of St. Nicholas of Mozhaysk (see S.12820MŁ, S.12950MŁ) has been widespread since the 16th-17th c. This image was also popular among Old Believers. Not accepting the liturgical reform, the adherents of the old Russian Orthodox church had crafted and spread their own objects of worship since the 17th c. Among those objects, folding icons made of cast metal alloys, known as 'skladnie', were very popular. The presented relief depiction of St. Nicholas of Mozhaysk, topped with a characteristic kokoshnik, constitutes the central wing of a triptych - a three-winged folding icon. Teresa Bagińska-Żurawska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-3967