St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.

Material: jasper.

Length: 136 mm.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

(Holy Bible).

The image of one of the world’s most revered Christian saints is reflected in the author’s stonecutting sculpture by Sergey Falkin. According to historical sources, Nicholas the Wonderworker lived a long life and devoted it all to serving God and unselfishly helping his neighbors, often even doing his good deeds in secret. He knew in his heart that the most solid and correct good is that which is done in secret.

Sergei Falkin creates his original reading of the image of a Christian saint in bronze, referring to the tradition of icon painting and the plasticity of wooden sculpture. The face of the saint is “painted” with a laconic line that is characteristic for icon painting, somewhere soft, somewhere angular. The color of hematite jasper, like a cinnabar that has been darkened over the centuries, conveys a peaceful majesty in the image of the saint, and the dark black and silver streaks in the pattern of the stone and the peculiarities of polishing the sculptural surface – give the face a glow, the same way icons painted with natural pigments have. 

The texture of the carved wooden plastic – in some places roughly carved, in other places lovingly and carefully polished – is created by the particularity of molding and elaboration of the hair, beard, and the smooth surface of the face itself.