Zhdan Dementiev, 1630
Copy
Forefather Noah is depicted full-length and is turned to the central image. He is dressed in a whitish-green robe and a scarlet himation. He is holding an open scroll with his prophecy in front of him in both hands. The margins, the halo and the background of the icon are decorated with a copper cover with stamping.
Noah was the son of Lamech, the ninth-generation descendant of Adam, the father of the mankind and the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs. In the Book of Genesis, Noah is portrayed as ‘a righteous man, blameless in his generation’. Therefore when God intended to return the Earth to its pre-Creation state of watery chaos by flooding the Earth because of humanity’s misdeeds, he made Noah build the Ark to save his family, animals and birds from extinction. Afterwards, God made a covenant with him and promised never again to destroy all the earth’s creatures with a flood. ‘God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth’.
The icon was restored by the team of I.P. Yaroslavtsev in the Inter-Regional Special Scientific Restoration Workshop of the Rosrestavratsiya Association in the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR in 1978-1979.
