50 Roubles The icon 'The Virgin of the Don'

The Virgin of the Don — also called the Donskaya — is traditionally attributed to Theophanes the Greek and dates to around 1392, though this attribution remains debated among art historians. The icon gained particular veneration after Ivan the Terrible carried it on his 1552 campaign against Kazan, a practice that continued through subsequent Muscovite military ventures. It has been housed in the Tretyakov Gallery since 1930, removed from the Donskoy Monastery during Soviet confiscations.

This issue belongs to Russia's ongoing series commemorating icons of the Russian Orthodox Church, resumed in earnest after 1991 as part of a broader cultural rehabilitation of pre-Soviet religious heritage. The reverse reproduces the Tretyakov's panel, not a later copy.