egg tempera, gold leaf, and gesso on wood panel with kovcheg. Two insert splints on the back. 32 x 27 cm (12 5/8 x 10 5/8 in.), signed in Cyrillic Sidor Silin and indicated to be from the collection of Aleksei Zinovievski on the verso. Mother Mary is depicted tenderly holding the Christ Child up to her face against a light green background, each with a gilded halo, the deep ochre-colored borders punctuated by depictions of seven angels and saints including Archangel Michael, Angel Gabriel, Holy Great Martyr Catherine, Saint Peter, Saint Pavel.

LOT NOTES
During the late 1920s, shortly after the Russian Revolution, two young New York society women, sisters Adelaide and Helen Hooker secretly traveled to Russia "out of curiosity and cussedness." Unbeknownst to their father, the president of the American Defense Society, they spent over six months in snowy Russia, pursuing adventure in Moscow, Leningrad, Vladimir, Novgorod, and Suzdal among other cities. Searching for a glimpse of "Old Russia," the women sought-out  ancient  churches and monasteries, just as they were being taken over by the government and converted to Anti-Religious museums. This icon was among those that Adelaide and Helen Hooker purchased from these establishments and brought to the United States, in effect saving them from becoming victims of iconoclasm. In the States, the icons were kept in esteemed family collections. One of the sisters would go on to marry the IRA officer Ernie O`Malley, the other the writer John P. Marquand. Their youngest sister,  Blanchette, went on to marry John D. Rockefeller III, and would become a major benefactor of the Museum of Modern Art, where she served as president from 1972 to 1985. The story of their travels was published in Good Housekeeping, July-September 1930.  

PROVENANCE
Originally entered the collection of Aleksei Zinovievski in 1809, possibly the same Archpriest Aleksei Zinovievski who presided over the trial for Alexander Pushkin’s murder in a duel in 1837
Purchased by the Mother of the current owner in Russia during the 1920s (see below)
thence by descent in Family Collection