The Mother of God of Eleus

The displayed icon of the Mother of God Eleusa is known in the lands of Rus as 'Umilenie' in the Feodorovskaya variant - see S.12685MŁ. The original icon was supposedly miraculously saved during the invasion of Mongol tribes on the north-east of Rus and later appeared to one of the royal family members on a tree. Researchers put forward several versions of the emergence of the painting, linking its creation with the Rurik dynasty. The depiction of the Feodorovskaya Eleusa could have been created circa 1164 at the earliest, commissioned by prince Andrey Bogolyubsky, the son of Yuri Dolgoruki and a propagator of the cult of Mary, for the monastery in Gorodets. Two other versions put the time of the painting's creation at the 13th c. and connect it to the person of Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, the son of Yaroslav the Big Nest and grandson of Yuri Dolgorukiy. The painting could have been commissioned by Prince Yaroslav circa 1218-1220 on the occasion of the return of his second wife Theodosia, who was first taken away from him by his father-in-law and then returned, especially since her return meant the birth of the son Feodor, meaning Theodor, in 1219. The icon could also have been created in 1239, commissioned by Yaroslav as a wedding gift for his son, Alexander Nevsky. This assumption is supported by the fact, that on the back of the original Feodorovskaya icon, there is a depiction of St. Paraskeva, the patron of the engaged and of weddings. This theory indirectly explains the name of the icon, 'Feodorovskaya'. Theodore the Strategist, or Feodor Stratelates, was a military commander and a martyr from the first centuries of Christianity - the guardian of Christian knights; he was frequently chosen as patron among representatives of the Polotsk Mstislavich family, from whom the wife of Prince Alexander was descended. The name of this variant of Eleusa may also have resulted from the fact that the original icon was placed in the St. Theodore the Strategist Monastery in Kostroma in the 13th c. The Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God became the patron of the Romanov dynasty, which is described under S.12932MŁ. Teresa Bagińska-Żurawska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-3967 S.12808MŁ, Mother of God Eleusa Feodorovskaya