Saint Cyril's Monastery

On the marble iconostasis of St Cyril's Church hangs a Mother of God with a pale, grave face, the Child seated on her knee. It was painted by Mikhail Vrubel, then a young student of the Saint Petersburg Academy, who made all four icons of the iconostasis on zinc panels in Venice in 1884. The Virgin's features are widely said to come from Emilia Prakhova, the wife of the scholar who had hired him.

That scholar, the art historian Adrian Prakhov, was directing the restoration of a 12th-century church. It had been founded in the 1140s by Grand Prince Vsevolod Olgovich, of the Chernihiv line of princes, and served his family as a burial church on what was then the edge of Kyiv. About 800 square metres of medieval frescoes survive inside, among them a Last Judgment and a Dormition of the Virgin. Vrubel helped restore them and added murals of his own, including a Lamentation and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.

The monastery around the church was closed in 1786 and its buildings became a hospital, while the church kept the baroque pediment and cupolas added in the 18th century. Since 1929 it has been a museum, today a branch of the National Sanctuary Sophia of Kyiv.