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St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, Bulgaria ± a monument to Russian military glory. History and contemporaneity
DOI of the paper: 10.15382/sturV201517.145-156
Abstract
The key problem of this article is preservation of monumental painting, created by Russian artists of the mid 19th - early 20th century. For many years, researchers didn’t see the artistic value in the paintings of that time and not really tried to preserve it for posterity. Because of this attitude, many monuments in Russia have been lost forever. In this connection we have some interesting examples of religious art, preserved outside of our country. One of these truly unique monument is the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, built in honor of the thousands of Russian soldiers who died for the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Fortunately, it does not suffer the fate of those temples that was erected in memory of this event in other Balkan countries, and it survives till nowdays almost in its original form. Here are preserved superior murals and icons by V. M. Vasnetsov, A. A. Kiselev, A. M. Korin, P. E. Myasoedov and other Russian and Bulgarian artists. At the moment, due to lack of proper conditions of preservation and insufficiency of funds frescoes of Sofia’s cathedral threatens destruction, so it is important now is to draw attention to the problem of preserving these monumental religious art that are part of our common cultural heritage.
Keywords
Russian artists of the mid XIX- early XX century, the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, monumental religious paintings, the Russian-Turkish war of 1877–1878, lost monuments, A. N. Pomerantsev, V. M. Vasnetsov, A. A. Kiselev, A. M. Korin, P.
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