The fresco of the Virgin Hodegetria in the church of the Transfiguration in Ilyina street, Novgorod, and its artistic sources

The paper examines the iconography and style of the fresco-icon on the faüade of the Church of the Transfiguration in Ilyina Street. The fresco is considered to be one of the crucial artworks of Novgorod from the second half of the fourteenth century, and, is probably connected with the work of a southern Slav artist. The possible explanation for the co-existence of the fresco-icon, which was originally part of the decoration of the church's western narthex, and the decoration from 1378, the author of which was Theophanes the Greek, as well as the stylistic and colouristic differences between the fresco-icon and the decoration of the core part of the church, may lie in the circumstances caused by a fire in 1385. Those circumstances led to the renewal of the damaged fresco by artists who appeared in Novgorod during the final decade of the fourteenth century, when Theophanes the Greek had, most likely, already left the city.