The imperial academy of arts and the first competition for the best architectural design of the Church of St. Sava in Belgrade, 1904-1906

The article is devoted to a little-studied episode in the history of Russian-Serbian relations in the first quarter of the 20th century related to the participation of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in the preparation and summing up the results of the first competition for the best architectural design of the of St. Sava cathedral in Belgrade. At the request of the Primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Innocent, in 1904 the Academy established a special commission that was involved in developing the terms of the competition, and then studying and evaluating the projects submitted to it. The Academy involved outstanding representatives of Russian church architecture of that time to work on this commission, such as Benois, Kotov, Pomerantsev, Sultanov, Suslov and Preobrazhensky. The activity in this commission was one of the most important issues on the Council of Academy in 1906. Cathedral of St. Sava in Belgrade erected in honor of the most revered Serbian saint and the first Archbishop of Serbia Sava († 1236) is the largest temple of the Serbian Orthodox Church and one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world. Although it was eventually erected according to a design based on the architectural solutions proposed in the framework of the second competition held in 1926, the first attempt at architectural design of the temple, undertaken with the participation of the Academy at the first competition held before the First World War, is also of interest. This background deserves attention both from the point of view of studying the organization of the internal activities of the Academy at the beginning of the 20th century and the technique for working out such competitive procedures. The episode is also noteworthy as an example of Russian-Serbian cooperation in the field of church art. The author uses unpublished documents from the Russian State Historical Archive.