Kondakov's 'Facial Iconographic Original'
St. Petersburg, 1905. The Committee for the Care of Russian Iconography, established by imperial decree, publishes a work that is nearly impossible to find in private hands today: the print run was one hundred copies.

The idea belonged to Nikodim Kondakov (1844, 1925), the creator of the iconographic method for studying art monuments, an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Arts. The task was practical: by the beginning of the century, Russian folk icon painting was in decline, and the craft workshops of Palekh and Mstyora were working from deteriorating models. Kondakov proposed to provide icon painters with a standard - a collection of authentic ancient images with scientific commentary, so that the tradition could be restored not from memory, but from sources.
The first volume is dedicated to the iconography of the Savior. It contains a historical essay of 97 pages with 116 illustrations in the text, along with an atlas of 143 sheets: 14 color autotypes, 5 heliogravures, 40 phototypes, and 84 lithographic tables. The material was gathered from monastery sacristies, state and private collections of the Russian Empire, the Balkans, and the Middle East. It was printed by the partnership of R. Golike and A. Vilborg - the best printing house of its time; the folder format is 42×34 cm.

The second volume was supposed to cover the iconography of the Mother of God. It was never published: the Committee ran out of funds, and twelve years later, the Committee itself disappeared. Kondakov died in exile in Prague, and what was intended as a working manual for craftsmen remained a single volume - a monument to the unfulfilled program of saving the craft.

The publication has never been reissued until the reprint in 2001. The original from 1905 is a bibliographic rarity of the first order.