Ekaterina Rastorgueva. Restore of Paintings

"It is pleasing in the sight of God."

Ekaterina Rastorgueva. A portrait with a story.

 Among the many extraordinary people I have met in my life, Ekaterina Rastorgueva holds a special place. God has given her a rare, noble, and very difficult сalling. In her high school graduation essay, Ekaterina expressed her dream of becoming a restorer. After that, she studied at the Suzdal Art Restoration School, and then began working at the Rybinsk Historical and Art Museum. She has been working there ever since. Hundreds of masterpieces have passed through her attentive eyes and extraordinary hands. When we see works of art that delight us with their divine beauty, we often fail to imagine what they looked like before restoration, and we don't realize that it takes years to restore these masterpieces. The complex, painstaking, and time-consuming work that stops the process of destroying a masterpiece and brings it back to life requires tremendous effort and health, as well as constant learning and self-improvement.

This work is a life-long endeavor, as not everything yet has been restored or saved. The paintings and ancient icons, many of which have endured the bloody 20th century, are now calling for mercy and salvation. This work is not only a symbol of the return of beauty, which comes from God, but also a stance of quiet resistance to destruction and evil. This is especially true for the restored holy icons. The love, mercy, meekness, and humility that emanate from the divine faces affirm our faith that we have not seen the Lord in a ghostly manner, but that we are one with his divine nature and have been created in his image. Through the veneration of the Image, we venerate the Original. The life of Ekaterina, where the Earthly and the Heavenly are inextricably linked, is proof of this. It is not only a great blessing and a great calling, but also a salvation. It is a salvation of oneself through noble and uplifting work, and a moral salvation of others, because the struggle between Good and Evil and the war among people, some of whom destroy and others create, never ends. It was like in the godless Soviet times, when icons were thrown on bonfires and masterpieces of art were sold abroad, but at the same time, there were fearless Russian people who saved holy images and precious paintings.

...I remember the late autumn of last year in Rybinsk, which was as quiet and cool as always. We were leaving the city museum, where Ekaterina was showing her completed work, the restoration of the 1909 painting "Portrait of a Sister" by Ivan Dalmatov, a student of Ilya Repin, and the beginning of the restoration of a large canvas, an ancient copy of Raphael's "The Holy Family Under the Oak Tree." We talked about art and its place in human life, about our personal experiences, and about the completed restoration projects. But I especially remember her words about how difficult it would be to survive and live without this calling, which came to her young heart during her school years.

Savva Yamshchikov, a great devotee of the Russian land who brought countless iconographic masterpieces back to life, once wrote: "There are no miracles in everyday life. The testimonies of holiness granted by God are merely visible reminders of the eternity of existence, the incorporeal signs of the Creator, guiding people towards spiritual perfection. In everyday life, there are moments of enlightenment that justify enduring hardships, forgiving unjust insults, helping those who stumble, and trusting those who have once lied. These spiritual insights visit me, as they do any other person, extremely rarely, otherwise they would turn into prosaic moments in life. However, after such discoveries of the signs of eternity, the world around us expands its horizons and seems to lift us off the ground, allowing us to see the vast and unearthly." That's the best way to say it. These are golden words that illuminate the great work of restorers and creators, on which Russia still stands, despite the bitterness and tragedy of today’s Time of Troubles.

Rybinsk – St. Petersburg. April-May 2026.