Alypius of the Caves

Venerable Alypius the Icon Painter, monk of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, was a disciple of Greek masters and is regarded as the first Russian icon painter known by name. He is venerated as a saint of the Russian Church and remembered on 17 August (in other sources on 28 July), and on 28 September in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves. He died, according to tradition, in the year 1114, but this date is not certain.

His parents gave him to learn icon painting, then he was tonsured a monk in the time of Abbot Nikon. He helped the Greek masters adorning the Dormition church of the Lavra with mosaics. The account says that, while the Greeks were working at the altar of the Caves church, the young pupil Alypius had a vision: he saw a radiant icon of the Mother of God, from whose mouth a bright dove flew and entered the mouth of Jesus, depicted in the mosaic. Some of those present in the church also saw the miracle, and it moved the young man so much that he became a monk. Later he was a priest. He painted new icons and renewed old ones, and was known also as a healer. It is said that many of his works were made with the help of divine providence. When, before his death, because of bodily weakness he could no longer fulfil a commission, an angel appeared to him who, in an hour, painted the icon. As a skilled master he divided all his earnings into three equal parts: one for the monastery, one for the poor, and the third for materials.

The Kyiv Paterikon speaks of a Deesis of five figures and two large icons painted by him for a church in Kyiv, and according to another source, seven Deesis icons for a church in Podil, which did not burn in a fire and were therefore held to be wonder-⁠working. Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh gave the Dormition cathedral in Rostov an icon of the Mother of God painted by Alypius, perhaps the Mother of God Great Panagia (the “Yaroslavl Orans”), now in the Tretyakov Gallery. The Sven icon of the Mother of God is also attributed to him. He is believed to have taken part in the painting and mosaics of the Dormition cathedral of the Lavra and perhaps of the Saint Michael Golden-⁠Domed cathedral in Kyiv.

He fell asleep on 17 August. When his body was found, the fingers of his right hand were still held in the Orthodox manner of making the sign of the cross. His relics are kept in the Caves Lavra, in the Caves of Saint Anthony.