A copy of Port Arthur Icon of the Mother of God, created, probably in 1905 in Vladivostok, was found recently in the storage vaults of the Seaside Art Gallery.
This confirms the data that, when the holy image was brought to Seaside and it could not be delivered for the longest time to the besieged by the Japanese Port Arthur, they were creating copies of the original. One of them remained in Vladivostok until the destruction of the Dormition Cathedral. Perhaps one found that icon with which the participants of the procession took to the streets in 1905, trying to calm with prayers sailors and townspeople, who had organized a revolutionary pogrom in the town.
- In the spring of this year, looking through the list of icons that are stored in the art gallery, we noticed a familiar name - "Triumph of the Mother of God" - tells the abbess Barbara (Volgin), mother superior of the Nativity of the Mother of God female monastery in the village of Linevichi, participant of obtaining the Port Arthur Icon of the Mother of God (of Vladivostok) in Jerusalem. - Immediately they asked the keeper what it was and asked to look at it. And when we were allowed to see her, bringing it from the store vault, we found a familiar image of the Virgin with the holy napkin in her hands. I see in this some sort of special meaning. After all, we are receiving all the time more and more information. One is so very happy after such consolation.
The found copy of the icon, most likely, initially after the destruction of the Dormition Cathedral in the 1930s appeared in the regional museum named for V.K. Arseniev, from where in 1966 it was handed over to the picture gallery. A copy is made on canvas, measuring 87 x 54 cm, in a smaller format than the one stored in the Cathedral of the Holy Protection. It is executed in oil. Image is not clear.
Undoubtedly, the new find shows that the Port Arthur image of the Mother of God was originally intended for the spiritual strengthening of the faithful children of God, located on the Paschan borders of Russia. Such it remains to this day, no matter what questions arise about the location of the original icon, which is located only God alone knows where.
Abbot Innokenty