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Location. St. Petersburg. The Bronze Horseman (Russian: Медный всадник, literally " copper horseman") is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was opened to the public on 7 (18) August 1782. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne ...
According to a 19 th century legend, enemy forces will never take St. Petersburg while the "Bronze Horseman" stands in the middle of the city. During the Second World War the statue was not taken down, but was protected with sand bags and a wooden shelter. In that way, the monument survived the 900-day Siege of Leningrad virtually untouched.
- A tribute from Catherine the Great. In August 1782, a monument to Peter the Great was unveiled on Senate Square in St. Petersburg. One side of the pedestal contains a caption in Russian, “ПЕТРУ перьвому ЕКАТЕРИНА вторая лѣта 1782” ([to] PETER the first [from] CATHERINE the second, year 1782); and the other side has the same phrase in Latin, "PETRO primo CATHARINA secunda MDCCLXXXII".
- Made by a French sculptor. The famous French sculptor Etienne Falconet was commissioned to make the statue. He was recommended to Catherine by her friend, the philosopher Denis Diderot.
- Peter looks like a creator, not warlord. The sculpture of Peter was expected to be different. In fact, many expected it to be a pompous monument with a complex composition and many allegorical figures.
- Peter’s head was made by a female sculptor. Falconet, however, didn’t create the Emperor's head for the composition. Catherine the Great, who played an active role in the preparations, rejected all three sketches that the Frenchman made.
The founding of St. Petersburg by Peter the Great. by Alexander von Kotzebue. Peter the Great founded the Admiralty, which until the beginning of the nineteenth century was in use as a shipyard and where Tsar Peter personally participated in the design and construction of ships for the Baltic Fleet. On the site of the former shipyard now stands ...
Monument to Peter the Great. With its tiny head and massive torso, it's hard to believe that this statue offers a true representation of Peter the Great, the founder of the Peter and Paul Fortress (and of St. Petersburg). According to sculptor Mikhail Shemyakin, however, it was based on the death-mask and wax figure of Peter kept in the ...
In the popular imagination, the statue’s imperious gesture is forever linked to Alexander Pushkin’s famous verse from his poem “The Bronze Horseman.”. “Here the city will be founded in spite of our haughty neighbors, Here we are destined by Nature to hack a window on Europe.”. In Pushkin’s poem, the hero, Evgenii, loses his ...
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Russia, Europe. St Petersburg. The most famous statue of Peter the Great was immortalised as the Bronze Horseman in the epic poem by Alexander Pushkin. With his horse (representing Russia) rearing above the snake of treason, Peter’s enormous statue was sculpted over 12 years for Catherine the Great by Frenchman Etienne Falconet.
