It all started with the fact that the Senate of the Russian Empire decided to erect a monument in honor of the reigning Empress Catherine II. However, the far-sighted and understanding sense of the political situation and the mood of the people, Ekaterina refused this honor, saying that it was not worthwhile to erect a monument to her before her great predecessor Peter I was immortalized. Today, the history of this masterpiece is remembered not only in St. Petersburg, but also wherever there are monuments to Peter 1.
Catherine II conceived to create something grand, and she succeeded. Monument to Peter 1 “The Bronze Horseman” is a masterpiece of monumental art. And the story of its creation is similar to an adventure novel.
Where to get an architect
The question of choosing the right master Catherine took very seriously. In the end, on the recommendation of the professor at the Paris Academy Denis Didro, with whom she regularly corresponded, and his colleague Voltaire, the master was invited to St. Petersburg. The monument to Peter 1 was to be created by Etienne Maurice Falcone, a French architect who enjoyed the patronage of the Marquise de Pompadour herself, who was the legitimate favorite of the French king.
Long awaited opportunity
All his life Falconet dreamed of creating something monumental, but he had to work with sculptures of ordinary sizes. Therefore, the future author of the monument to Peter 1 happily concluded a contract, despite the small amount of the fee.
In fact, he began work on it back in Paris. The sculptor arrives in Russia with a ready-made sketch and a fully-formed idea of how the monument should look.
Hot debate
However, the problem was that literally everyone who had at least some influence on the final decision on the composition of the statue presented it differently. The history of the Bronze Horseman monument has preserved some of these suggestions.
Catherine herself wanted to see the statue of the emperor, made in the ancient Roman style. He should have been dressed in Roman toga, holding a scepter in his hands and radiating with all his appearance the greatness of a victorious warrior.
The representative of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a real state adviser, Yakov Yakovlevich Stelin gravitated to allegories. He persistently proposed to portray the king surrounded by other statues, which, according to his plan, were to personify victory, prudence and industriousness.
The personal secretary of Catherine II, Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy, who was president of the Imperial Academy of Arts, wanted the statue to be executed in a classic pose of a standing full-length man.
Denis Didro, who recommended hiring Falcone, also contributed to the boiling bowl of discord, offering to make a monument in the form of a fountain. So there was a likelihood that where the monument to Peter the Great is today, an elegant pond could show off.
And some very creative advisers suggested that one emperor’s eye be directed to the Admiralty building, and the other to the Twelve Colleges. It is terrible to imagine what the expression of this face should have been.
However, Falcone was not going to retreat. He wanted the first monument to Peter 1 to reflect the emperor’s real personal qualities, and not turn into a three-dimensional visualization of a collage of flattering epithets to the emperor. And the master managed to defend his position.
Model creation
The next three years the sculptor took to create a plaster model. He worked with a young assistant, his student Marie Ann Colot, who came with him from France. Falcone devoted much time to studying the personality and character of the emperor. He examined the plaster busts and masks of Peter I, made during his lifetime.
The sculptor turned to General Melissino, who was tall and figured like a king, and he agreed to pose for him. But the face of Peter I the sculptor did not succeed. Therefore, he entrusted this work to his 20-year-old assistant Marie Ann.
For valuable contribution to the creation of the monument, Catherine II ordered Marie Ann Colo to be a member of the Russian Academy of Arts and appointed a very substantial lifetime pension.
Work with a horse
And again, the sculptor had to withstand the opposition of the courtiers. This time, the breed of horse on which Peter I was to sit was the cause of the dispute. Representatives of the nobility insisted that this figure should be sculptured in the likeness of horses, long since accepted in ancient art.
But the master was not going to create a calm and solemnly marching harness horse. Monument to Peter 1 on a horse was supposed to be unique. Etienne Maurice Falcone set himself the most difficult task - to portray the rider on a rearing animal. To bring this idea to life, a wooden platform was built on which the rider was supposed to fly, lifting his horse on its hind legs.
From the royal stables were selected two magnificent trotter Oryol breed. History has preserved even their nicknames - Caprice and Diamond. The keepers (this is the name of a specialist teaching horse riding and training horses) Athanasius Telechnikov, Khaylov and others literally hundreds of times a day took off on the platform and noble animals, obedient to the will of the rider, each time stood on their hind legs, freezing for a moment.
This is the very moment that Etienne Maurice tried to catch. He squatted on his heels, peering into the trembling muscles on his horse's legs, examining the curve of his neck and the proud look of his huge eyes. The sculptor immediately sketched everything he saw so that later he would be able to work calmly with the model.
At first he sketched pictures. The monument to Peter 1 was depicted on them from different angles. Then he transferred his ideas to paper. And only after that he began to work on a three-dimensional model of sculpture.
For several years, the exercises of the carers continued. During this time, several people managed to change their positions. But the efforts were not wasted. Monument to Peter 1 “The Bronze Horseman” has no analogues in the world.
Thunder stone
Meanwhile, in parallel, another no less ambitious project was carried out.
The height of the monument to Peter 1 is 10.4 meters. To match, he had to pick up the foot. Etienne Maurice suggested that it should be a block made in the form of a wave. It was supposed to symbolize the fact that Peter I opened access to the sea for Russia.
However, they could not find anything suitable. The option of a pedestal made of several pieces of granite has already been considered. And then someone suggested announcing a tender to find and deliver a suitable stone. The corresponding announcement was immediately printed in the St. Petersburg Gazette.
Not much time passed when a peasant from the village of Lakhty appeared. He said that in their forests there is a stone that meets all the described requirements. In addition, the peasants claimed that Emperor Peter I himself climbed this stone more than once in order to observe the surroundings.
This statement, by the way, is not without some foundation. After all, near the village of Lakhty was the estate of Peter the Great. However, it doesn’t matter if the emperor once climbed there or not, but an expedition was sent to the stone, authorized to decide whether it was suitable for the intended purpose.
Local peasants called it Thunder-stone. According to legend, a long time ago lightning struck a rock and broke off this piece.
Transportation difficulties
Thunder-stone was recognized as suitable for serving as a pedestal, but its size created serious difficulties for transportation. Imagine a block 8 meters high (like a three-story house), 13 meters long (like 3-4 standard porches) and 6 meters wide. Of course, there was no question of any heavy equipment, and the distance to Senate Square in St. Petersburg (the place where the monument to Peter 1 stands today) was very decent.
Part of the journey was supposed to be done by water, but to the place of loading on the ship, the boulder had to be dragged over rough terrain at a distance of 8.5 kilometers.
Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy found a way out. At his suggestion, special wooden rails in the form of gutters were constructed. They were beaten with sheets of copper and prepared 32 bronze balls of suitable diameter. The mechanism was supposed to work on the principle of the bearing.
At first, a smaller model was tried. The original should have been ten times larger. After successfully passed the tests, we began to manufacture a full-size mobile mechanism.
Ground part of the path
Meanwhile, the first thing they began to remove from the stone was adhering earth and other layers. This operation made it possible to lighten it by 600 tons. Five hundred people soldiers and peasants were daily involved in the work of clearing.
After that, they began to clear a place directly around the Thunder-stone, enclose it with forests and prepare the ground for laying rails. This work took four months.
Along the entire route, it was necessary first to clear the road 20 meters wide, strengthen it with thick piles, and already on top of this lay out part of the collapsible rails. After the stone was moved, the rails were removed from the distance traveled and moved forward.
The progress of the transportation of giant stone was monitored throughout Europe. It was an unprecedented event. Never before had such a huge monolith been moved so far.
Hard road
With the help of levers, the Thunder-stone was hoisted on a special platform, which was installed on the rails. This operation required a lot of time and incredible efforts, but in the end a piece of rock, lying in the damp earth for more than a century, was torn from its place. So began his long journey to the capital, where he was to install a monument to Peter 1 “The Bronze Horseman”.
Thirty copper balls were installed in the gutters of the rails at a distance of about half a meter from each other. To ensure that none of these balls stops and comes close to the neighboring one, people specially appointed for this should have to follow. They had iron poles, which, if necessary, could push or slow down the spherical part.
For the first spurt, the structure loaded with stone was able to be shifted by half a meter. During the next, I managed to overcome a few more meters. And to the bay, where the Thunder-stone was to be reloaded onto a special barge, there were about nine kilometers ....
In order not to waste time in vain, 46 masons began to process Thunder-stone right on the way. Their task was to give the rock a form conceived by Etienne Falconet. At this stage, the sculptor again had to endure an exhausting ideological battle, since all the courtiers unanimously declared that it was necessary to leave the stone as is and not to change anything in it.
However, this time the master managed to insist on his own. And although the opponents tried to present this as an insult of a foreigner over the beauty of Russian nature, Catherine gave permission to handle the pedestal.
Some sources indicate that on the road a boulder cracked and split into two parts. Whether this happened as a result of work carried out on the stone or for any other reasons, history is silent. We also do not know anything about the reaction of the people involved in the transport to this incident. Whether they perceived it as a catastrophe or, conversely, as a blessing, we will no longer know.
The fallen off part of the Thunder-stone was left to lie in a clearing where it can be seen today, and the team continued on their way to the Gulf of Finland.
Preparing for shipping by water
Meanwhile, a pier and a special vessel were built on the shores of the Gulf of Finland to transport huge stone. The weight of this load would not be supported by any barge existing then. Therefore, the talented ship foreman Grigory Korchebnikov began to develop drawings, according to which they had to build a pram - a flat-bottomed vessel that could keep afloat a significant weight.
Pramas were intended to move heavy artillery. In fact, these were compact mobile fortresses equipped with guns around the perimeter. Moreover, the number of guns could reach 38 units. Add to this the weight of the cores, gunpowder and the people who served the guns, and you can get an approximate idea of the capacity of the pram.
However, even this was not enough. I had to design a more powerful ship. In order to be able to immerse the Thunder-stone, the pram was drowned by collecting water into it. When the stone was placed on the ship, the water was scooped up, and the journey began along the sea section of the path. Sailing was successful, and on September 26, 1770, the stone was delivered to Senate Square, where the monument to Peter 1 is located today.
The last stages of work on the monument
During the duration of this whole epic with transportation, Etienne Falcone did not stop working on the sculpture. The height of the monument to Peter 1 astounded the imagination of the townspeople. In truth, many simply did not understand why to build such a whopper. Do not forget that at that time in the country there was not a single monument to anyone. And the gypsum model, made in full size, which everyone could freely see in the courtyard of the workshop, caused a lot of gossip.
But the bewilderment of ordinary citizens could not be compared with the reaction of the masters. When the time came to begin casting the statue, no one agreed to undertake this work.
Falcone invited to cast a bronze monument to Peter 1, a description of which he gave only in general terms, one skilled French master. However, when he arrived and saw the scale of the work, as well as got acquainted with the requirements of the sculptor, he simply called Etienne crazy and went home.
In the end, Etienne Falconet managed to find a caster who agreed to take on a truly daring project. When preparations were underway for the transportation of Thunder-stone, parts for the mechanisms by which the transportation was carried out were cast by cannon craftsman Emelian Khaylov. Even then, Falcone noted his diligence and accuracy. And now he invited him to cooperate in casting the monument itself.
The work was difficult. Moreover, it was not just in gigantic proportions. The very construction of the monument created unprecedented problems. If you look at the monument to Peter 1 in St. Petersburg, you will see that he has only three points of support - the hind legs of the horse and the tail. At the same time, maintaining the necessary balance is not an easy task. But there was no way to train. The masters had only one attempt.
To ensure the stability of the sculpture, Falcone resorted to several original solutions. Firstly, he introduced into the composition a snake trampled by a horse, secondly, according to his plan, the walls of the front of the statue were incomparably thinner than the thickness of the rest of the monument, and thirdly, four tons of iron were added to the horse’s croup to keep her balance. Thus, Peter 1 on the horse had to be reliably installed.
Casting accident
For three years, preparatory work for the casting of the statue continued. Finally, everything was ready, and the masters set to work. The shape of the monument was in a special pit. A slightly higher melting furnace was located, from which pipes sloped away. Through these pipes, hot metal was supposed to flow into the mold, filling it evenly.
In order to prevent these pipes from bursting, a fire was made under each of them and they were continuously heated. But in the process of casting one of the fires went out. This went unnoticed, and the cooled pipe gave a crack through which molten metal began to flow. And this, in turn, entailed a fire.
People rushed out of the workshop scattered, Falcone fainted, and only Khaylov was not taken aback. He quickly put out the beginning of the fire, filled the crack in the pipe with fresh clay, tore off his clothes, wet it and wrapped it around the cracked pipe.
This was a real feat. And not only because Khailov managed to maintain composure in an emergency. Fighting fire was not easy. The caster found himself in serious burns and lost his eye. But thanks to him, most of the statue was saved.
Monument to Peter 1 "The Bronze Horseman" today
Many historical events happened to be seen by the bronze Peter I, sitting on an eternally reared horse. A visiting card for visitors to St. Petersburg is the Bronze Horseman monument. Tourists hurry to take a photo on its background, frantically clicking the shutters of cameras. And the native Petersburgers traditionally come here to spend part of the wedding ceremony.
You might want to see the Bronze Horseman monument (St. Petersburg) in person. Considering this work of the great master, do not let the haste and fuss that we are so accustomed to deprive you of the pleasure of careful contemplation of this beautiful sculpture. Try to get around it and look at the details from different angles. You will notice the depth and richness of design in this simple, at first glance, monument.
Pay attention to the details: instead of a saddle on the horse’s back you will see an animal skin, and the clothes the emperor is wearing, in fact, did not exist in any historical period. The sculptor tried to combine primordially Russian attire with elements of vestments of the ancient Romans. And admittedly, he managed to do this very organically.
Having examined the monument “The Bronze Horseman”, whose photo is so popular among tourists, without haste, you will take away from the ancient capital not just another photograph of a famous landmark, but you can really touch the historical past of a great country.