The Bronze Horseman is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great. It was sculptored by Étienne Maurice Falconet, one of the most popular French Rococo sculptors of the 18th century. Poet Aleksandr Pushkin wrote a famous poem called the Bronze Horseman, and the name of the statue was greatly influenced by the poem. The statue stands on a pedestal called the Thunder Stone, which is often claimed to be the largest stone ever moved by man.
The Bronze Horseman statue was built by Catherine the Great, the German princess who married into the Russian royal family. Eager to align herself to her husband, she order its construction, and inscribed the Latin phrase Petro Primo Catharina Secunda MDCCLXXXII meaning Catherine Second to Peter the First, 1782, to express her attitude to her husband and her place in the line of great Russian rulers.
The statue took 12 years to complete. The tsar's face was done by Marie-Anne Collot, who was then 18 years old. She was an apprentice under Falconet and had accompanied him to Russia in 1766.
|
