(ca. 1330- ca. 1415) – was born in Byzantium. He decorated churches in Constantinople, Chalcedon (a suburb of Constantinople), Genoese towns Galata and Caffa (now Theodosia in the Crimea). In 1370 he immigrated to Novgorod. There he created his first famous icon that has survived to this day – a mural painting in the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyin street (1378).

Between 1390 and 1392 Theophanes moved to Moscow. There he supervised the icon-painting in some of Moscow’s churches, such as the new stone church of the Nativity of the Virgin, built in 1394 on donation from the Grand Princess Evdokia at her courtyard. He also painted the church of St. Archangel Michael (1399) but its frescoes burnt out during the Tokhtamysh invasion. In 1405 he painted, in company with Andrei Rublev, the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.

Theophanes is attributed icons of the Deesis row in the iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral (first iconostasis with full-length figures in Russia). Among his most famous icons are Mater Amabilis of the Don / the Dormition (ca. 1380), The Transfiguration (1408) held in the State Tretyakov Gallery.