Second half of the 14th century
Tempera on wood
128 õ 75
Princes Boris and Gleb were the younger sons of Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev. Soon after the death of their father in 1015, they were cruelly murdered by their elder brother Svyatopolk, who was eliminating rivals in his fight to take over the throne of Kiev.
In the «Life and death of… Boris and Gleb» by the chronicler Nestor (1070–80s) there is a story about how prisoners in a jail called upon these princes for help and they appeared on horseback.
This monument is the earliest of the surviving icons of this type of iconography.
The icon of «Boris and Gleb on horseback» is one of the first discovered at the beginning of the century. It immediately became widely known. The icon was the subject of a lengthy academic polemic. For a long time it was considered to come from Moscow, and since it was associated with the Church of the Assumption in the Moscow Kremlin there was a logic to this provenance. But the stylistic peculiarities of the icon forced scholars to appreciate its roots in Pskov painting of the early period and this opinion has predominated among specialists in art history in recent years. A confirmation of this view may also be found in chronicle sources, which speak of the participation of Pskov masters (stone masons and icon painters) in building and decorating the churches of the Moscow Kremlin.
at 10, Lavrushinsky Lane, Hall 58
