Tempera painting

Tempera painting

The collection of icons of the Murom Museum is not extensive (a little over 300). Most of the icons once decorating the churches of the ancient city have not survived. Nevertheless, the Murom collection can be considered one of the most original icon collections in Central Russia. It contains masterpieces that are notable for their rare iconography; sometimes they have no exact analogies. The «Murom-grad. Treasures of Ancient Murom» exhibition presents the most striking exhibits of Old Russian painting; each of these works became a real discovery for specialists and cultural community when restorers started working with them.

The exhibition is devoted to an underdocumented era; it presents the history of the «ideal» Murom city filled with stories, fables, legends, as well as real events that took place on the Murom land in the distant pre-Peter times. The dominant feature of the exhibition is the icon «Peter and Fevronia in hagiography» with the marvelous «Murom city» image of the late 16th-early 17th centuries. It was one of the first showpieces of the museum in the twenties of the twentieth century and the first discovery of Murom iconography made by restorers in the sixties.

In addition to Peter and Fevronia, patron saints of the marriage, the exhibition showcases Saint Princes Constantine, Mikhail, and Fedor, baptists of Murom, Saint Juliana of Lazarevo, several donor townspeople, builders of churches and monasteries, and characters of the mid-16th century Murom novels.

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