Terebenev, Alexander Ivanovich

Figures of Atlantes in the portico of the New Hermitage (1844-1849), granite .

The son of sculptor and cartoonist Ivan Ivanovich Terebenev , was born in St. Petersburg on January 9, 1815. He lost his father very early ^[6] , a week after birth.

In 1824 he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts , where he studied first in the drawing class, but then he chose sculpture as a specialty, which he studied under Professor V.I. Demut-Malinovsky .

At this time, sculpture at the academy was undergoing a transitional period: instead of imitating the forms of ancient classical Greece, they began to strive to depict natural, real forms. Among the adherents of the new direction was Terebenev. He showed great talents, made brilliant successes in sculpture and received a number of awards: in the first years of his teachings, two small silver medals for sculpting a group from nature and for a bust from naturebookseller I.V. Olenin (his uncle), in 1835 two large silver medals (one for sculpting a group from nature, the other for a bas-relief programmed) and a small gold for a bas-relief " John the Baptist preaches in the wilderness about the coming of the Savior" (stored in the academic church), for which he was left at the academy as a pensioner . A small gold medal was received for another bas-relief “ Joseph, who tells in a dungeon about the meaning of dreams seen by the two courtiers of the pharaoh ”, executed according to a given program.

In 1836, his bas-relief “ Building the Ark of Noah with Sons ” was presented at an exhibition of artworks, which attracted universal attention and was acquired by the Academy of Arts; this bas-relief has not been preserved.

After graduating from the Academy course in 1836 with the title of artist of the XIV class and being left at the academy as a pensioner, Terebenev got the right to go to a government account in Italy , for which he needed to do the job of obtaining a large gold medal , but his marriage prevented this work (his daughter Professor A.E. Egorov ), he began to work for a living and had to abandon the thought of going abroad.

In the coming years, upon leaving the academy, Terebenev performed a high relief depicting Vera for the building of the Board of Trustees and round statues and high reliefs decorating the arches, niches and sails of the main staircase, and fashioned four evangelists in the form of a bas-relief for the city church in Peterhof .

Soon he managed to show his talents when working in the Winter Palace after a fire . He made the following works: two colossal statues depicting Wisdom and Justice for the front staircase ; huge bas-relief, long in seven fathoms , depicting the battle of the Amazons with the centaurs , located in cavalry hall ; two figures - Flora and Hebe in the form of a bas-relief - in the chambers of the sovereign, as well as the above two figures of angels from the papier mache , depicting the Old and New Testaments - for the palace church. These works put forward Terebenev among the best sculptors and delivered him numerous orders.

He executed two large high reliefs, in four fathoms each, for the hall of the Board of Trustees (which caused a lot of sense and greatly contributed to its fame), commissioned by Countess Orlova-Chesmensky high relief for the Yuryevsky monastery , depicting the Virgin and St. Theoktist , monuments Pastor Murald and General Kononov, a number of works for the Alexander Orphanage , the Catherine Institute and others.

Then Terebenev, with the rank of sculptor, was sent to the Crimea to guide the exploration of the Pantikapaean antiquities in Kerch . Here he fashioned a bust of the Kerch town governor Prince Herheulidze and began to sculpt a round statue of Amphitrite , but did not manage to finish it, as he soon returned to Petersburg with Kerch antiquities; he successfully restored many of these antiquities.

The most remarkable and outstanding of his works are caryatids and terms made by him for the Hermitage . These figures were carved from Serdobol granite . Caryatids are made of colossal size, in seven arshins of height , and adorn the entrance of the Hermitage ; He was awarded the title of academician for the clay model of the caryatid that he submitted to the competition, and for the first figure made, Emperor Nicholas I , who liked her very much, awarded him a diamond ring.

In total, he carved ten caryatids. Term he made 80 large, of which 17 were sent to Peterhof for the New Pavilion , and 40 smaller; terms are placed between the windows of the Hermitage. For the Hermitage, however, he made a plafond in the Apollon Hall and some work for galleries adjacent to the hall.

To produce all these works, Terbenev, at the behest of the sovereign , was assigned to the arena workshop next to the Winter Palace. Upon completion of work for the Hermitage, he was granted the Order of St. Anne of the 3rd degree and received, in addition to the payment due to him, another 17 thousand rubles ^{[Comm. 1]} awards from the sovereign.

The same terms as for the Hermitage were made by him at the behest of the sovereign for a gift to the Prussian king ^{[Comm. 2]} . These terms were taken to Berlin by Terebenev himself; for them he was awarded a diamond ring from the king.

In 1850, he was appointed to the service as an assistant to the chief of the 2nd branch of the Hermitage, and later also to the head of all sculptural works located in the imperial palaces and gardens. During his service, he made a statue depicting the month of February at the front of the Admiralty building , then a copy of the antique statue of the Athlete taking the sweat from his hand with a knife, a monument to the Duke Maximilian Leuchtenberg in the form of a sarcophagus, located in the Catholic chapel of the Page Corps , is busted Emperor Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna , sent to the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna .

Of his other works, made at different times, the most remarkable are: a bronze bust of the artist V. A. Karatygin , which is placed on the artist’s monument at the Smolensky cemetery in St. Petersburg ^{[Comm. 3]} , a bust of A. S. Pushkin made of marble, and busts of Golenishcheva-Kutuzova , Kunitsyn, Kosikovsky, Yakovlev, artist BM Samoilov , Count D. I. Khvostov , H. V. Kukolnik , artist Vasilenko.

In the heyday of his talent, Terebenev received numerous orders, and his income was significant. But he led a wide lifestyle and quickly lived everything that he earned, spending money on a luxurious atmosphere, his own trips, dinner parties and balls. If he needed money, he sold as much as he could, struggling to get through to a new large income; once he even sold a house with marble columns, window sills and pediments, which he had just finished.

Terebenev was not capable of hard work, and when inspiration began to leave him over the years, he stopped receiving profitable orders and went bankrupt. He was dismissed from the Hermitage before reaching retirement. In 1858, Terebenev fell ill with smallpox and lay down at the Mariinsky Hospital . His wife became infected by him and died.

The death of his wife completely undermined his strength, and he became a hypochondriac . In the spring of 1859 he caught a cold ^{[Comm. 4]} and lay in the Obukhov hospital , where he died on July 31, 1859, in poverty and forgotten by all. After him, there was not even money left for the funeral, which was arranged at his own expense by the marble worker G. A. Balushkin, who helped Terebenev during his work for the Hermitage. Only Balushkin and K. A. Ukhtomsky went to the cemetery behind his coffin ^{[Comm. 5]} .

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