Russian icon, 19th century

Russian icon, 19th century
"Saint Boniface".
Tempera on wood.
Cracking and flaking. Two dowels are missing.
Measurements: 31 x 27 x 2,8 cm.
Saint Boniface has been represented in this nineteenth-century icon, haloed with a golden nimbus, wrapped in a red knob and carrying a cross and a rolled-up parchment. The effigy is presided over by a representation of the Holy Face. Boniface of Tarsus was a Christian martyr of the 4th century, venerated as a saint by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. According to the Golden Legend, he was martyred in 307 in Tarsus (capital of Cilicia, in present-day Turkey) where he had stopped on his way to the Holy Land, where he had been sent from Rome by his mistress Aglaida (or Aglae), to obtain relics of the martyrs.