This work is a copy of an icon dating to 1677 or 1678 and ascribed to Ivan Saltanov, and now kept in the Moscow Kremlin Museum-Reserve. At the centre of the composition is a cross known as the Cross of Kiy, which was produced in Palestine to a commission from Patriarch Nikon, and which is now housed in a church in Moscow. It was decorated with framed fragments of sacred relics and with precious stones. The figures in attendance on the left are Patriarch Nikon, Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich and Emperor Constantine the Great. On the right are Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna Miloslavskaya, the first wife of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich, and Empress Helena. Both Constantine and Helena are known as ravnoapostol’nye, or “Equal to the Apostles” in the Orthodox Church.
