This high-quality artistic image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help arrived at the museum in September 1963. The icon likely dates from the early 20th century, but it was mounted in a much older altar case and – as archival records indicate – placed in a chapel in Posada Rybotycka, where, unprotected, it fell into disrepair. A characteristic feature of these images is their compositional similarity to the Hodegetria, but, through the depiction of the emotions of the Mother and Child, their conceptual closeness to Eleusa. These emotions are expressed through Jesus’ gestures: he clasps Mary’s hand with both hands and makes a sudden turn, during which the sandal slips from his left foot. The Child’s terror and the Mother’s sadness were caused by the sudden appearance of the Archangels carrying the instruments of suffering. The icon’s original was created in the late Byzantine period, and it gained popularity thanks to Italo-Cretan painters as Our Lady of the Passion after the fall of the Eastern Empire. One of the icons found its way to the Augustinian church in Rome in the 15th century, and then to the Redemptorist church built on its site in 1866. There, it became venerated as Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The Redemptorists made thousands of copies of it, and today it is the most popular icon venerated in the Catholic Church.
