4/17 July

St. Andrei was born ca. 1360. Descended from educated stock, he was distinguished by exceptional wisdom, demonstrated in his creative work. He studied the art of painting in Byzantium and Bulgaria. For some time, St. Andrei worked with Theophanes the Greek, and perhaps was one of his students.

The Venerable One's life is involved with two monasteries: The Holy Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra, and the Holy Savior - St. Andronicus of Moscow Monastery, where the Saint received monastic tonsure. In a spiritually lofty milieu, surrounded by an atmosphere of sanctity, Monk Andrei learned both from historical examples of holiness and from the living images of sanctity manifested by the spiritual strugglers around him.

For almost 20 years, and right up to his very death, he lived the life of an iconographer and spiritual struggler, together with his "fellow-faster," Daniel Chorny. It was already after St. Andrei's death that Daniel, who, inseparable from him in heart even after death, received a death-bed revelation that his spiritual brother had been glorified in the Heavenly Kingdom.

The renowned, marvelous Icon of the Holy Trinity, which to this day remains an incomparable model in the realm of iconography, was the work of St. Andrei Rublev. He wrote the icons on the walls of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, and throughout the Dormition Cathedral and on its iconostasis in the city of Vladimir (1408). St. Andrei Rublev wrote an Icon of the Vladimir Mother of God for the Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir, the Icons for the iconostasis and the Icons covering the walls of the Dormition Cathedral in Zvenigorod (end of the 14th - beginning of the 15th C.); the Deisis Row in the iconostasis of the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Most-holy Theotokos in the St. Savva-Storozhevsky Monastery. He also did, inter alia, the wall painting and the iconostasis for the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra.