July 21, 2016 02:15 PM
by James
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I have literally held thousands of antique Russian icons in my hands. I can usually tell you pretty quickly what a Russian icon is worth, what time period it is from, and what story is being told. I can quickly identify if the painting is new on an old board or if the cracks are fake (to make the icon look older than what it is). Occasionally, our firm comes across an antique Russian icon with a story as interesting as the iconography and I thought I would share one such example with you
If you know anything about Russian history, you know who the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov is. His story is for another blog post, because today I only have time to tell you about this one icon. The icon itself depicts his name saint (in Russia, it was very common to commission a Russian icon of a saint that shares the name of the intended receiver – in this case, the Crown Prince) Saint Alexei Metropolitan of Moscow.
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