lexis Arapoff - artist, born in St. Petersburg (1904), painted in Paris (1925-1930), and then in Boston (1930-1948). The icons, a blend of Eastern and Western traditions, were painted to enhance the prayer life of all believers. Arapoff was the only son of noble parents, both surgeons, and he was taught from childhood the values of self-sacrifice and idealism. After he became a Roman Catholic in 1934, his art, his writings, his every action, portrayed a consuming and total absorption in God and perfection of himself through his ascetic and saintly life.

Although Arapoff painted portraits, flowers and landscapes in oil as a form of recreation—he called it "recharging my battery"—most of his energy was devoted after 1934 to a self-imposed apprenticeship in mastering the painstaking technique of the Medieval Russian icon painters. In a few short years his mastery was so complete that all of his work, religious and secular, reflected the spirit and style of that great age of religious art.

In article for the magazine America, Arapoff said about himself: "I know that much work, sanctity, enlightenment and contemplative life is required to make a painter nearer to that unknown function, to that mysterious tender power that can give cosmic worth to human efforts. That power that makes Science into Art and makes Art serve religion."