Murals of the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Palekh: Iconography and Style

The thesis is devoted to the study of the iconographic and stylistic features of the murals of the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in Palekh, which represents one of the most significant examples of provincial monumental painting, having developed at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. The aim of the study is a comprehensive study of the paintings of the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross, their attribution and determination of their place in the history of development of Palekh monumental art and provincial church paintings of Russia in the early 19th century. The study of archival documents, which had previously been of no scientific interest, made it possible to trace the creative path of the members of the artel that painted the main volume of the cathedral. This revealed that the Moscow artists of Borisoglebsk origin, brothers Pyotr and Mikhail Sapozhnikov, were responsible for the work. As part of the research process, we have constructed a proposed chronology of the construction of the temple and the creation of the murals within it. Additionally, we have investigated the subject compositions' locations on the temple walls and their interactions with the ornamental decoration. We have been able to ascertain the corpus of visual sources of iconography used by the masters when creating narrative scenes of the church murals, and to conduct a comparative analysis of the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in Palekh with other monumental paintings in Vladimir, Kostroma and Yaroslavl provinces and works executed by the artel of the Sapozhnikov brothers. As a result, the traditions and innovations expressed in the monument, the place of the murals in the history of the development of the Palekh school and Russian provincial church art of the early 19th century have been determined.