Copy of the Memorial Cross

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Copy of the Memorial Cross

Creation period

2015

Dimensions

337x170x41,5 cm
337x170x41.5 cm

Technique

Metal, plastic, tint

Collection

O.E. Kler Sverdlovsk Regional Ethnography Museum

Exhibition

Napolnaya School Museum in the town of Alapayevs

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крест.jpg

Artproject

Copy of the Memorial Cross

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The Memorial Cross was first installed in 1908 close to the Senate building inside the walls of the Moscow Kremlin. Three years before, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was killed on the same spot by social revolutionary Ivan Kalyaev who threw a bomb at him.

A quote from the book The Cross of the Grand Duke: ‘The cross was erected through voluntary donations gathered by the 5th Kiev Grenadier Regiment, which was commanded by the Grand Duke, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna in memory of her spouse’s merit to the Fatherland and for the sacred memory of him’.

The cross was designed by artist Viktor Vasnetsov who used to know Sergei Alexandrovich well.

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The front of the cross was trimmed with enamel insets and a quote from the Bible reading “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do!”.

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According to the Holy Scripture, this was what Jesus Christ said about his crucifiers. Under the curved top of the cross, the artist put two cherubs and the Virgin of Anguish.

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On the reverse side, the cross shows a full-height image of Sergius of Radonezh, the Grand Duke’s patron saint. The cross bears a vertical inscription, ‘In the lasting memory of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich assassinated on the 4th of February 1905’. The cross was bronze-cast, its pedestal dark-green labradorite. An oil lamp was placed before the monument. The cross became the symbol of Christian pardon and penitence.

Like many other monuments of the Tsarist Russia, the cross was eradicated by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The new regime did not wish to keep such constructions on the assumption that such monuments have neither historic nor artistic value.

Today, the memorial cross has been restored from Viktor Vasnetsov’s drawings. The monument was unveiled and consecrated in May, 2017 on its historical spot inside the Moscow Kremlin. The exposition at the Napolnaya School Museum in Alapayevsk demonstrates a copy of the monument re-created from the artist’s drawings, too.

Открытие.jpg

President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill at the unveiling ceremony. Source: Sverdlovsk Regional Ethnography Museum

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Viktor Vasnetsov was an architect and artist known as the master of historical, genre, and folklore painting. He attended a seminary in Vyatka and continued his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Vasnetsov is the author of many famous paintings prompted by Russian fairy tales and bylinas, the epic narrative poems, including his ‘Bogatyrs’, ‘Alyonushka’, and many others.

In the late 1890’s, he turned his eye onto religious themes. He painted frescos in cathedrals in Kiev and St. Petersburg, and to be able to do that, he studied Byzantine art and ancient Russian icon painting.

В. М. Васнецов.jpg

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov. Self-portrait (1873). Source: wikipedia.org

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Sverdlovsk Regional Ethnography Museum

Copy of the Memorial Cross

Creation period

2015

Dimensions

337x170x41,5 cm
337x170x41.5 cm

Technique

Metal, plastic, tint

Collection

O.E. Kler Sverdlovsk Regional Ethnography Museum

Exhibition

Napolnaya School Museum in the town of Alapayevs

Point your smartphone camera to open in the app

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Order of Saint Vladimir 4th Degree

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Order of Saint Vladimir 4th Degree

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