MOSCOW. May 16 (Interfax) - The decision to hand over Andrei Rublev's Trinity icon to the Russian Orthodox Church has been coordinated with the necessary people, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.
"Such decisions are not made without coordination with those with whom it is necessary to coordinate," Peskov told reporters on Tuesday when asked whether the president consulted with the cultural community on the transfer of the icon.
He noted that the decision was mainly linked to "humanitarian considerations."
"This concerns a large number of believers in our country, for whom the icon is a great shrine, whose keeping in the museum's collections does not quite meet the aspirations of our believers," Peskov said.
He was asked whether the possibility of handing other relics over to the Russian Orthodox Church was being considered.
"I am not aware of that," he said.
The decision to return Rublev's Trinity icon to the church was announced on the Russian Orthodox Church's website on Monday.
The icon will be on display for public worship at the Christ the Savior Cathedral for one year and then will be brought back to its original location at the Trinity Cathedral at the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, the statement said.
On July 17, 2022, Tatyana Denisyuk, head of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra's press service, told Interfax that the icon was brought to the Lavra, which hosted celebrations marking the 600th anniversary of the discovery of St. Sergius of Radonezh relics, for the first time since the October Revolution. The icon was displayed in a special display case in the monastery's Holy Trinity Cathedral on July 17 and 18.
The Russian Culture Ministry told Interfax that the Trinity icon was transported from the Tretyakov Gallery to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius in a specially made climate-controlled display case. In turn, the Tretyakov Gallery's press service said that the transportation was carried out with all necessary precautions, and at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius the icon was placed in a capsule, especially created for this purpose, which maintains a climate usual for the icon. The request to move the icon came from the ROC leadership, and it was granted following a "comprehensive assessment of the risks involved in transportation."
The Trinity icon, which was painted by Andrei Rublev in the 15th century, is the most famous of his works and one of the two surviving works (along with the frescoes in Vladimir) that scientists believe to be authentically his.