The icon depicts the martyrdom of 40 soldiers of the Roman army convicted to death for the confession of Christianity in Sebastia about 320 g. It was winter. The warriors were stripped and put into the icy waters of the lake. To break their will, on the bank melted the bath.
There are 39 standing in the water martyrs in loincloths. On the left is a log cabin, in which one of the warriors enters, who did not suffer the torment. The image of the guard, who believed in Christ at the sight of the feat of martyrs and who stood in the place of a weak-willed man, is omitted.
In the sky is a blessed Christ and five angels with crowns of heavenly glory. There are fewer warts than martyrs. Behind the crowns, which are kept by angels, the edges of other wreaths are visible – they seem to gradually come out of the depths. This was to convey the image of heavenly retribution to the faithful, which takes place in front of the viewer.
In ancient icons such a treatment of movement, which lasts in time, is impossible, they always depict 40 crowns, motionless in the sky above the martyrs. The departure from tradition is associated with those changes in the understanding of the image that occurred in Russian religious art in the XVIII century. under the influence of secular art. The master freely owns the traditional tempera technique, artfully pricks the gold of the heavenly crowns with lacquers.
In the poses of the angels, in the figure of their fluttering cloaks, the echoes of the art of the Petrine era are palpable. Faces of angels, ruddy, with strong reflections and reflexes in the shadows, recall the icon painting of the mid-18th century. But the desire of the iconographer to the anatomical correctness of the image of the body inclines towards the dating of the icon in the second half of the 18th century. Probably, it was performed in the 1770s – 1780s, when the influence of the Academy of Arts became evident in the stylistics of Russian church art.
The icon painter could work in any of the cities that had significant traditions of icon painting and, at the same time, were in active communication with the capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg. The icon is a qualitative example of Russian iconography of the Synodal period, a vivid example of the adaptation to the art of art of the elements of the artistic thinking of the New Age. It represents artistic, historical, cultural and museum value.
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