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The Birth of the Virgin is taken from the apocryphal Protoevangeliary of James; the subject was borrowed from Byzantine art by old Russian artists. Anna, mother of Mary, is seated while women bring her gifts; the baby Mary is being washed and in the openings of the upper tier we see Joachim, Mary's father.
The wealth of red, bright yellow and green tones recalls Novgorod icons while the soft outlines of the figures turned towards Anna and their unhurried ceremoniousness find analogies in 16th-century Moscow art. The noticeable variety of scale of the figures and the nature of the painting allow us to attribute this icon to a northern Russian master who used as his models works by both Novgorod and Moscow artists.