The Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, known as the miraculous icon of the Virgin, was discovered in Kazan in 1579 and is one of the most venerated icons of the Russian Orthodox Church.

According to Patriarch Hermogenes, who was a priest at the Gostinodvorskaya Church in Kazan at the time, after a fire that destroyed part of the city in 1579, a ten-year-old girl named Matrona saw the Virgin in a dream. She indicated where to dig for her icon in the ashes. At the indicated spot, about a meter deep, the icon was indeed found. A monastery for maidens was built at the site of its appearance, where Matrona became the first nun, taking the name Mavra.

On August 22, 1612, a decisive battle began near the Novodevichy Monastery between the Second Militia and the troops of Hetman Khodkevich, ending in the defeat of the Polish forces despite their numerical superiority. The leaders of the Second Militia interpreted the appearance of the icon at the Novodevichy Monastery as a miracle, thanks to which the monastery was freed from part of the garrison of Polish-Lithuanian troops. The icon indeed accompanied the Second Militia. The Kazan icon was installed in the parish church of the Pozharskys, and at the initiative of the prince, a local celebration of the icon was established in Moscow on October 22. In 1649, after the birth of the heir Tsarevich Dmitry in 1648, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich ordered the Kazan icon to be celebrated on October 22 'in all cities every year.' Over the next 150 years, dozens of officially revered copies of the Kazan icon spread across many dioceses of the Russian Church. Today, hundreds of churches and monasteries dedicated to the Kazan icon are located in the territories of the former provinces of the Russian Empire. In 1768, Empress Catherine II adorned the cover of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in the Kazan Mother of God Monastery with her diamond crown.