A decision of the museum council of Croatia in 1977 transferred the collection of icons hitherto in the possession of the Dubrovnik Museum of Modern Art to the Dubrovnik Museums. The collection contains more than two hundred valuable works of icon-writing painting, created from the 16th to the 19th century, and reflects the heterogeneity of the stylistic development of this kind of religious painting, visible in the interwoven influences of Byzantine icon-writing and western reflections.

Works produced locally were on the whole influenced by eastern models and Italo-Cretan icon-writing. There are also some works from workshops of Russian icon-writing, largely oriented to mass-production. A small but valuable part of the collection consists of icons of the Boka Kotorska icon-writing school, from the end of the 17th to the middle of the 19th century. The importance of this indigenous painting school lies in its being the last phase of Late Byzantine painting in a single area in a given period.