A.Ye. Beideman's murals in St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris in connection with the Crimean period of the artist's oeuvre

The article is about the little-known murals in St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris (18591861, architect R.I. Kuzmin), painted by Alexander Yegorovich Beideman (1826-1869). The scientific novelty of the results obtained is in the fact that for the first time A. Beideman's religious works from the Parisian cycle are introduced and placed into scientific circulation. This cycle is master's most significant preserved religious work and unique in the Orthodox ecclesiastical art of Western Europe of the second half of the 19th century. Although such brilliant masters as E.S. Sorokin, P.S. Sorokin, M.N. Vasilyev and F.A. Bronnikov worked on the creation of the polychrome ensemble of the Parisian cathedral together with Beideman, his murals in Paris became one of the first in the academic period of Russian ecclesiastical art, in which the transition to the traditions of Byzantine iconography was manifested. Beideman painted eighteen images in the lower part of the temple and on the pillars. Images of Our Lady of Akhtyr with St. Mary Magdalene and St. John are in the niche to the left of the central apse; the Deesis with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist is in the niche to the right of the central apse. Images of Christ the Great Bishop, St. Jacob the Apostle, St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory the Theologian are in the central apse. Images of St. Mitrofan of Voronezh and St. Joseph the Songwriter are in the sacristy. The image of New Testament Trinity is in the conch. Images of Metropolitans of Moscow Peter, Alexius, Jonah, and Philip are on the pillars below the evangelists. The artist avoided a bright palette, working mainly in the ocher-silver gamma, which, along with the frontality and pronounced statics, gave a sense of “incorporeity” to the figures of the saints. The closeness to the traditional iconography was given by the monumental architectonics of the flowing robes and the almost iconographic austerity of the faces. But, nevertheless, there is a big difference in the style solution of Beideman's paintings in the Parisian cathedral compare to his easel and monumental works of different years. Especially comparing to Beideman's watercolor etudes for the murals in the Holy Cross Exaltation Church in Livadiya (architect I.A. Monighetti) and St. Olga church of in Mikhailovka near Strelna (architect D.I. Grimm). The author of the article comes to the conclusion, based on the field research materials, his own restoration and research experience and the comparison of Beideman's surviving works, in particular, in Livadiya, that the painting in the Parisian cathedral could have been somewhat modified over time. But the artist's conscious stylistic manner is also possible. The chronology of Beideman's creative path, the exact period of his work in Paris, has been clarified in comparison with the period of his work in the Livadiya church in Crimea.

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