Icon of the Mother of God "The Mount Not Cut by Hands"

 

This miracle-working icon, a complex and extremely rare sample of Old Russian painting, was kept in the local tier of the iconostasis in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Saviour at the Solovetsky Monastery. All other icons of this type known to be in existence were painted later. Probably, this is not a copy, but the original icon from which a number of copies were subsequently made. The main source of its iconography is the Akathistos to the Mother of God, whose meta­phors emerged on the basis of the Biblical text. The name of the icon is based on the interpretation of a dream of Babylonian king Nebuchadnez­zar by the Prophet Daniel who identified the mountain that the king had seen in his dream with a new, Christian religion. There is no special feast day in honor of this icon.