The Heavenly Host. Image and Veneration

Price:

1500 RUB.

The catalogue is dedicated to the images of warrior-saints in Russian and Byzantium art. It brings together over one hundred and thirty masterpieces created between the 11th and 20th centuries, from the collections of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, the State Hermitage, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Historical Museum, the Mikhail Abramov Museum of the Russian Icon. These are icons, sculpture, armoury and arms, orders and awards, old banners and their watercolour drawings, made in the 19th century, as well as Mikhail Nesterov’s and Pavel Korin’s sketches, dedicated to the great Russian commanders Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy.

The book opens with an introductory article on the heavenly host in Christian world culture. It consists of several sections covering themes of veneration of the Archangel Michael – the archistrategos (or ‘supreme commander’) of the heavenly host, Saints George, Demetrius of Thessaloniki, Theodore Stratelates, John the Warrior, Varus and others. Of particular interest is the history of the return of the pious princes Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy to art.

The brightly illustrated publication is aimed at a wide range of readers.

The catalogue is on sale in the Assumption Belfry, at the Museum shops opposite the Patriarch's Palace, in the Alexander Garden and Armoury Chamber.