Mother of God Kasperovskaya

Magnificent Moscow example of the icon of the Mother of God Kasperovskaya. The original, from which it takes the model and name, has a very particular history, which reaches up to the present day.

It takes its name from Kasper, the name of the family of a landowner from Kherson (a city in present-day Ukraine), who received the original icon in 1809, after it had been handed down from parent to child since end of the 16th century, when it arrived from Transylvania brought by a Serbian lord.

We remember this date because from this moment it seems that she began to be an instrument for various graces for this family and other people from the village and then from other nearby cities. In 1844 she was exhibited in the village cathedral and her fame and her "exploits" increased. In 1854, during the Crimean War, the icon was solemnly transferred in procession to the cathedral of Odessa, besieged by enemies. After the archbishop's prayer on the feast of the Virgin Mary, the enemy retreated and the city remained unharmed. Since then the Mother of God Kasperovskaya has been the patroness of Odessa, and she has remained so to this day. And when the Odessa cathedral was bombed in July last year, among the few things that were saved, the Kasperovskaya icon, so dear to the Ukrainian people, was also found unharmed.

It belongs to the model of the Mother of God of caresses - of which we have many versions - which in turn is a variant of the model of tenderness. Compared to other Marian iconographic compositions, it has the peculiarity of being like a particular "detail" on the faces, which greatly highlights the gestures of the Mother and the Child, who meet gently with their cheeks, while their hands delicately move in a game of hugs, of the Mother towards the Son, and of the Son towards the Mother, to whom he hands the Word, depicted by the scroll of parchment.

Before this embrace of tenderness between Mary and Jesus, in this prayer which becomes a truly inspired image, stopped mothers, children, soldiers, the sick, generations and generations, entire peoples, who found the way for a trusting, tender prayer to God, as certain as the intimate affectionate confidence that can only be had with a mother who has known us and held us in her arms since our origins. An image that reveals to us the tender and maternal love of the Father, a love so great and sweet that it becomes a child and - to become a child - it invents a mother, the sweetest and safest mother we could wish for.


Chiara Dal Corso
NP May 2024