The wooden sculpture of Saint Catherine was made in the 18th-19th centuries; the exact time of its creation is unknown. The carved statue of the Christian Great Martyr decorated the Saint Catherine Cathedral of Ekaterinburg which was demolished by the Bolsheviks in 1930. Now there is Labour Square with a fountain in its place.
Sculpture of Saint Catherine
Creation period
18th -19th centuries
Technique
Woodcarving
Exhibition
2
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Sculpture of Saint Catherine
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Saint Catherine had always been considered patroness of mining, therefore she was especially venerated in the Urals. November 24, Saint Catherine’s Feast Day, was the main holiday in pre-revolutionary Ekaterinburg.
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Saint Catherine lived in Alexandria in the 4th century A.D. She came from a noble family and received brilliant education – she spoke several languages, had knowledge of medicine and could recite Greek poets. When a young girl, she met an old man who told her about Jesus Christ and shortly afterwards she adopted the Christian faith. When she was eighteen, pagan Emperor Maximillian came to Alexandria.
He had heard about Catherine’s beauty and intelligence and decided to test her. The Emperor summoned fifty wise men to contest the young woman’s wits. Catherine, instead, told the scholars about Christ and they became believers. The angry Emperor ordered all the wise men to be executed and Catherine to be imprisoned. She was brutally tortured and when she was beheaded, milk flowed from the wound instead of blood. The relics of the Great Martyr are kept in the Sinai Monastery in Egypt. The Saint is venerated by Christians all over the world.
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The Ekaterinburg church was located on the territory of the Verkh-Isetsky Metal Works. During the reign of Alexander I, it was one of the main ironworks of the Russian Empire. It was built in 1726 on the left bank of the Iset River in the environs of Ekaterinburg. The church, the foundation of which had been laid three years before, was consecrated in the same year. For over twenty years the Saint Catherine Church was the only Russian Orthodox church in town, but in 1747 the building was destroyed by fire. Twenty years later, a stone church was built in its place where, together with a new carved iconostasis, this wooden sculpture of Saint Catherine was installed. On September 22, 1768, at the anniversary of Catherine the Great’s coronation, the new church was consecrated.
Photo of the Saint Catherine Cathedral taken not long before its destruction.
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The Ethnography Museum of the Urals capital received the sculpture in the 1940s. It arrived from the Sverdlovsk Anti-Religious Museum, the entry in inventory book of which read:
‘18th century wood-carved sculpture of Saint Catherine from the Ekaterinburg Cathedral… Oil-painted; green dress with red little flowers; red, ermine-lined mantle; holds a palm branch in her hand; part of the clothes at the bottom are broken off’.
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Only two sculptures of the Great Martyr are known in Russia. The other one is the city of Perm.
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O.E. Kler Sverdlovsk Regional Ethnography Museum
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Sculpture of Saint Catherine
Creation period
18th -19th centuries
Technique
Woodcarving
Exhibition
2
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