Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Icon-Atelier of Krystyna Kuś-Kilichowska

Traditionally painted icons with tempera technique and gilded

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Our Lady of Perpetual Help

height: 40 cm
width: 30 cm
thickness: 2,5 cm

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Hand-written (painted) icon by iconographer M.A. Krystyna Kuś-Kilichowska graduate from Nicolaus Copernicus University, Art Conservation and Restoration Faculty.



Icon written (painted) using old traditional techniques:

  • gilded with golden leaves 23.75 karat
  • painted on gesso a number of substrates made from a traditional mix of an animal glue binder and chalk
  • painted in egg tempera technique
  • traditionally painted on a hollowed out linden wood forming a so-called ‘kovcheg’
    (ark or shrine) separated from the elevated margin (border, frame) by the ‘luzga’,
    a shallow angled edge
  • provided with tapered and dove-tailed battens inserted into the back
    (like icons from the 12th to 15th centuries)
  • covered with amber shellac and varnish


Postacie przedstawione na ikonie opisane są przy pomocy liter:

MP – OY = Mother of God (on both sides of the upper part)
IC – XC = Jesus Christ (on the right side of the head of the Infant Jesus)
OFM = Archangel Michael (the angel on the left side of the viewer)
OFS = Archangel Gabriel (the angel on the right)




Icon Our Lady of Perpetual Help

"Perpetual Help" is one of the best known calls relating to the Mother of God among the Christians.

In the icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, the Child Jesus is not portrayed with the physical proportions of an infant, but appears almost as an adult in miniature form. This has been interpreted to indicate that He is God. Yet He is human as well, for He clings to His Mother’s hand in fear, while gazing up toward the angel over His shoulder. One of His sandals has come loose, indicating the haste with which He had run to her.

The Child Jesus is so frightened because the angels in the picture are holding instruments of His Passion and death. The angel on the left bearing the gall, the lance and the reed, while the angel on the right holds the cross and nails.

The face of Our Lady is grave and sorrowful, with her large eyes directed not at Jesus, but at us.

One feels that she is pleading with us to avoid sin, which has caused her Son to suffer so much for us.