Icon - Nicholas the Wonderworker - Wood

Saint Nicholas of Myra (Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker), one of the most depicted saints in Russian Orthodox iconography.

Saint Nicholas appears half-length, with his characteristic frontal baldness, grey hair and a short beard.
He is dressed in episcopal vestments and the omophorion, clearly indicating him as a bishop.
With his right hand he makes the blessing gesture.
In the left hand he holds the Gospel, richly decorated.
On both sides of his head appear two small medallions with Christ and the Mother of God, an element very common in icons of Saint Nicholas and related to the tradition of his sainthood and episcopal authority.
Due to the rather schematic drawing, the dark colors, the treatment of the faces and the gilded work of the vestments, it seems like a Russian icon of popular/provincial tradition, probably from the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries.