Venerable Gregory the Iconographer of the Kiev Caves

Iconography and Legacy

The Orthodox tradition records Gregory as a fellow-laborer of Saint Alypius of the Caves, who is recognized as the first icon painter of Kievan Rus and a disciple of Greek iconographers from Constantinople. Saint Alypius is commemorated on August 17.

According to the "Accounts of the Holy Iconographers," a text written in the early eighteenth century, Gregory "painted many wonderworking icons throughout the Russian Land," and his relics remained incorrupt.

One account suggests Gregory may have been among the iconographers from Constantinople who came to Kiev to decorate the Great Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, describing him as a Byzantine. The sources, however, provide no definitive basis for the claim that he was an associate of Saint Alypius, and the exact dates of his life remain unknown.

Gregory is honored in the Ninth Ode of the Canon of the Service of the Synaxis of the Holy Iconographers.

Relics & Shrines

Gregory's sacred relics are located in the Near Caves of Saint Anthony at the Kiev Caves monastery (Kyiv Pechersk Lavra). The Near Caves, founded in 1057, preserve seventy-nine surviving burials.

He is listed among the notable figures interred there, alongside the iconographer Alypius, Nestor the Chronicler, the physician Agapetus, the prince-ascetic Nikolai Sviatosha, Kuksha of the Kiev Caves, and Ilya Muromets.