The Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas in Novi Bečej is the second presented structure in the series "History of Art – Protected Cultural Monuments in the Municipality of Novi Bečej," following the house of Vladimir Glavaš in Vranjevo. Alongside the residences of wealthier citizens, their palaces, summer houses, and castles within the territory of the Municipality of Novi Bečej, numerous church buildings of great significance have been preserved – both Orthodox and Roman Catholic temples. In this relatively small area, a total of fourteen have been documented, including the Medieval Basilica in Arač, with 11 declared as protected cultural monuments.

In the present area of Novi Bečej and its immediate surroundings, there were human settlements as early as ca. 3000 B.C. There were two extraordinary archaeological sites of this period in the vicinity of Novi Bečej and Vranjevo: Borđoš and Matejski Brod.[1]

The most famous remains from the Medieval period are the ones of the basilica Arača, located in the area between Novi Bečej and Novo Miloševo, at the distance of about 20 kilometers northeast from the city. The monastery was probably built in the first half of the 13th century.[2] While changing its owners, this monastery was reconstructed and expanded, and so its outer shape and inner content has been changing too.

Protected spatial cultural-historical unit Center of Novi Bečej, is a well-preserved old center of the borough settlements, organized according to the administrative provisions and laws of the late 18th and early 19th century in Vojvodina, with authentic standardized old municipal buildings from the late 18th century, preserved until today, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church St. Nicholas, built in the second half of the 18th century. The houses in the main street of Marshal Tito and Trg Slobode (Liberty Square) are mostly two-storey buildings, built in the 19th century until the First World War, with a preserved authentic look and allotment. With its architectural-stylistic values and the role in the historical events, political, cultural and educational life of the city, the valorized architectural heritage gave this unit an important place in the history of the Serbian people in Vojvodina and Serbia.

According to historical sources known so far, several years have been suggested regarding the commencement of the construction work of the Novi Bečej temple and all of them are within the second half of the 18th century. According to the record on the church itself, it was built in 1774. While writing about the history of Novi Bečej and Vranjevo, Lazar Mečkić contests this year, citing data from multiple historical sources. The book of Dr. Jene Sentklarai The History of a Parish of the Čanada Diocese states that the current large church was built in 1786. Dimitrije Ruvarac in Schematism of Eastern Orthodox Serbian Metropolitanate of Karlovci (Sr. Karlovci, 1900) mentions the year 1794, while Dr. Samu Borowsky in Torontúl vármegye (Budapest, 1911), suggests 1796, but this date is connected with the description of Vranjevo.¹⁵

The Church of St. Nicholas in Novi Bečej is a single-nave building with a bell tower above the western facade, an elongated space of the nave, and an altar apse on the eastern side, externally and internally pentagonal.

It is constructed of brick, then plastered. The roof is a pitched double-slope covered with clay tiles. Besides the main portal on the western side, the church has two side entrances, on the northern and southern sides.

The existence of the iconostasis of Stefan Gavrilović in a town Novi Bečej, in the Middle Banat, is not easy to explain when we know that the location of his creative work was almost always on the territory of Srem. That was admitted by O. Milanović-Jović while she was studying his work, back in the seventies of the 20th century; however based on her study Gavrilović was being credited for his work in Bečej in the first place.

Within the churchyard, the old church school is located on the east side, while to the south there used to be the parish office or former sacristan flat, demolished in 2009. The building was erected at the same time as the church, at the end of the 18th century, or at the very beginning of the 19th. It had an elongated rectangular base, and double, wooden, two wing windows, which were divided into smaller panes and also a single door made of solid wood, formed with radially arranged planks with metal locks.

The Existing State of The Church Prior to The Renovation

Church of St. Nicholas in Novi Bečej was in very poor condition due to many years of decay and inadequate building interventions that presented a danger to the building. A damage of the mural paintings and decoration on the ceilings, arches and walls occurred because of leakage.

The heaviest damage was visible on the walls due to the effects of rising damp.

In the Church of St. Nicholas in Novi Bečej, specifically in the choir of the church or narthex walls beneath the choir as well as on the very walls of the nave and the altar area, there was a large number of very valuable icons and liturgical objects.

The greatest value of this collection, a total of 14 objects, are in fact protected icons and parts of the church mobiliar which were transferred from the old temple on the banks of the Tisza, from the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, known as the chapel Monastery“, built in the mid-eighteenth century.[32]

Pavle Simić was born in Novi Sad into a merchant family. He gained his first knowledge about the art painting from Alojz Kastanj, an immigrant from Italy, who had his workshop in Novi Sad. However, as early as in 1837, Simić was enrolled at the Vienna Academy, where he stayed for five years. In this period, the Academy was led by L. Kupelwieser and J. Führichs, who were completely dependent on the artistic views of F. Overbeck, the main advocate of the German Nazarene painting. The artistic ideal of these painters was the revival of Christian art through the return to the old German painting art (A. Dürer) and, which is characteristic of Overbeck, the return to the Italian Renaissance painting (Perugino,

Not much is known about Stefan Gavrilović today, even though he was a prolific painter and played an active role in the social and cultural rise of the Serbian people during the late 18th and early 19th century. That was precisely the transition period when the formative phase of many Serbian painters is marked by a clash between the Late Baroque tradition and the first hints of Classicism.

In a diary of the memories of his birthplace Mol, Novak Radonjić, a painter and writer, mentions Stefan Gavrilović among respectable and old Mol residents, allowing us to reasonably presume that Mol, in Bačka, was his birthplace. However, it is certain that he spent the greatest part of his intensive cultural activities as a citizen of Sremski Karlovci, where he held one of the last painter workshops, with which a long-standing tradition in this city was concluded.