Virgin of Vladimir

The Virgin of Vladimir is a twelfth-century Byzantine icon of the Virgin and Child, painted in the Eleusa type in which the infant Christ presses his cheek against his mother face. Brought from Constantinople to Kievan Rus in the early twelfth century, the icon became one of the most venerated and politically significant works of art in Russian history, credited across the centuries with protecting Moscow from invasion and used in the coronation and blessing of Russian rulers. It has been repeatedly restored, and only small areas of the original twelfth-century paint, chiefly the faces of the Virgin and Child, survive beneath later overpainting. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/