The Mother of God is shown half-length with a blue-green veil and wearing a red-ochre maphorion decorated with three gold stars signifying her cosmic status. Her head is inclined to her left and she looks directly at the viewer while supporting the infant Christ in her left arm. She raises her right in a gesture that draws our attention towards the Son. Christ looks to our left, as though contemplating eternity, a scroll in his left hand, his right raised in blessing and the right foot displaying the naked sole. The type is a variant of the Byzantine Hodegetria, the great tenth century icon that protected Constantinople.

The Tikhvinskaya protected the city of Tikhvin and soon became a celebrated and much loved image throughout Russia. A sixteenth century manuscript recounts its miraculous origins by the shores of Lake Lagoda in 1383.[1] It miraculously saved the Tikhvin monastery from the invading Swedish army in 1613. The original icon was looted in 1941 and later was in the Orthodox cathedral of Chicago before being returned to Russia in 2004.

[1] The Tales of Miracles of the Icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God. A text dated to the sixteenth century which recounts four separate apparitions involving the Tikhvinskaya.