MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/. About 230,000 believers have bowed down in prayer before Andrey Rublev’s Holy Trinity icon at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior since June 3, Reverend Alexander Volkov, spokesman for the Moscow diocese, told TASS on Wednesday.

"A total of 230,000 people worshipped the icon during its time at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. At first, when there was information that the icon would be in the church for only a short time, a lot of people came daily. When it was announced that the icon would be there until the Day of St. Sergius of Radonezh, the number of people who came to see it was even greater," he said.

Dating back to the early 15th century, the Holy Trinity icon is regarded as Rublev’s crowning masterpiece. It was painted for the iconostasis of the Holy Trinity Monastery (now the Holy Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra) at the request of Reverend Nikon of Radonezh (1350-1426), a disciple of St. Sergius of Radonezh and the second abbot of the monastery after him. In 1929, the icon was moved to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, following the order of the People’s Commissariat for Education of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

On May 15, it was announced that the icon would be returned to the custody of the Russian Orthodox Church by an order from President Vladimir Putin. Later, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and Russian Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova approved an agreement for the formal donation of the ‘Holy Trinity’ icon to the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra monastery in Sergiyev Posad, in the Moscow Region. The agreement was made for 49 years with an option to extend it.