The Bronze Horseman () is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was opened to the public on . Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. The statue influenced an 1833 poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, which is widely considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature. The statue is now one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg.

The statue's pedestal is the Thunder Stone, the largest stone ever moved by humans. The stone originally weighed about 1500 tonnes, but was carved down during transportation to its current size and weight of 1,250 tons.

Statue

200px|thumb|left|Head (original) of the model after which the monument by [[Peter Falconet| Falconet was cast in gypsum by Marie-Anne Collot. Russian Museum, Saint-Petersburg]]

thumb|The Bronze Horseman, by [[Vasily Ivanovich Surikov]]

The equestrian statue of Peter the Great is situated in the Senate Square (formerly the Decembrists Square), in Saint Petersburg. Catherine the Great, a German princess who married into the Romanov line, was anxious to connect herself to Peter the Great to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the people. She ordered its construction, and had it inscribed with the phrases Petro Primo Catharina Secunda MDCCLXXXII in Latin and Петру перьвому Екатерина вторая, лѣта 1782 (Petru pervomu Ekaterina vtoraya, lěta 1782) in Russian, each meaning 'Catherine the Second to Peter the First, 1782', an expression of her admiration for her predecessor and her view of her own place in the line of great Russian rulers. Having gained her position through a palace coup, Catherine had no legal claim to the throne and wanted to represent herself as Peter's rightful heir.

In correspondence with Catherine the Great, Denis Diderot suggested French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet, a friend of his, for the commission. The empress followed his advice and Falconet arrived in Russia in 1766. After being remelted and recast, the statue was later finished. It took 12 years, from 1770 to 1782, to create the Bronze Horseman, including pedestal, horse and rider.

The tsar's face is the work of the young Marie-Anne Collot, then only 18 years old. She had accompanied Falconet as an apprentice on his trip to Russia in 1766. A student of Falconet and Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, Collot was called Mademoiselle Victoire (Miss Victory) by Diderot. She modelled Peter the Great's face on his death mask and numerous portraits she found in Saint Petersburg. The right hand of the statue was modelled from a Roman bronze hand, found in 1771 in Voorburg in the Netherlands at the site of the ancient Roman town Forum Hadriani.

thumb|left|Inauguration of the Monument to Peter the Great. Engraving by A. K. Melnikov of the drawing by A. P. Davydov, 1782

On 7 August 1782, fourteen years after excavation of the pedestal began, the finished statue was unveiled in a ceremony with thousands in attendance. Conspicuously absent was Falconet, as a misunderstanding between him and the empress turned into a serious conflict. As a result, he was forced to leave Russia four years before the project was completed. Catherine largely forgot about him afterwards, and came to see the Bronze Horseman as her own oeuvre. The statue itself is about tall, while the pedestal is another tall, for a total of approximately .

Thunder Stone

thumb|The Transportation of the Thunder-stone in the Presence of Catherine II; Engraving by I. F. Schley of the drawing by [[Yury Felten, 1770]]

For the pedestal, a rapakivi granite monolith boulder known as the Thunder Stone () was found at Lakhta, inland from the Gulf of Finland in 1768. The Thunder Stone gained its name from a local legend that thunder split a piece off the stone. Falconet wanted to work on shaping the stone in its original location, but Catherine ordered it be moved before being cut. After Carburis devised the method, it took 400 men nine months to move the stone, during which time master stonecutters continuously shaped the enormous granite monolith.

thumb|[[Commemorative coins of the Soviet Union|Commemorative coin released in the USSR in 1988 to commemorate the monument to Peter the Great]]

According to the fall 1882 edition of La Nature, the stone's dimensions before being cut were . Based on the density of granite, its weight was determined to be around .

<gallery class="center" widths="180px" heights="180px">

File:The Bronze Horseman of Peter the Great.jpg|Statue of Peter the Great in the winter

File:RUS-2016-SPB-Bronze_Horseman_02.jpg|Side with the Latin inscription. The other side of the pedestal carries the same inscription in Russian.</gallery>

References

Notations

  • Histoire et statues des personnalités qui ont marqué Saint-Pétersbourg
  • Les Français à Saint-Pétersbourg, extrait du livre de N.Smirnova, ci-dessous.
  • Transport du piédestal de la statue de Pierre le Grand, in La Nature, 1882.

Bibliography

  • Natalia Smirnova, Saint-Pétersbourg ou l'enlèvement d'Europe, éd. Olizane, Genève, 1996
  • Christiane Dellac, Marie-Anne Collot : Une sculptrice française à la cour de Catherine II, 1748–1821, L'Harmattan, (2005) .

Further reading

  • Alexander M. Schenker, The Bronze Horseman: Falconet's Monument to Peter the Great, Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 2003 .