For almost two and a half centuries it has been standing over the Neva. The official opening of the monument to Peter the Great by Falcone took place on August 7, 1782.
Sometime in one of the first days of August, usually the first day off, connoisseurs of antiquity always gathered next to it to celebrate the next anniversary of the installation of the monument to Peter the Great on Senate Square in St. Petersburg.
Now the tradition is remembered only in jubilee years, but the next jubilee has to wait another fifteen years. Probably, this is a sign of the times that today no one is afraid of him, as Pushkin's Eugene was afraid.
It seems that the Leningraders-Petersburgers have already fought off all their own in the terrible days of the Blockade. But they admire Falkonetov Peter, as before, more often they just love him, affectionately calling him “Petrusha”. After those same 900 days, people in the city treat him somehow warmer, more humane.
Against this background, brides are now regularly photographed, and grooms, opening champagne, certainly aim at the tail of the king's horse. Dashing bombiles on Nevsky, ready to rip off three skins from anyone, even from foreigners, for a ride "straight to Peter", take no more than five hundred.
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Russia cannot complain about the lack of monuments to Peter the Great. There was a time when only Ilyichs were sculpted, but even then a copy of the excellent Rastrelli bust was put right at the Moscow railway station.
Then they returned the "Tsar-Carpenter" to the Admiralty Embankment, immediately Zurab Tsereteli fussed in the first throne, and the Shemyakinsky, actually pretty "half-corpse" was seated in the middle of Petropavlovka. However, brides are also not indifferent to him - they rubbed their knees to a mirror shine. So it got accustomed.
But there is only one Falconet Peter. He is not just different - Peter I was different himself, somehow he does not fit into the line of predecessors and successors on the Russian throne. Thanks to Catherine for rejecting the once ready-made equestrian monument of Carlo Rastrelli - he would not have taken root on the banks of the Neva and could hardly cozily coexist next to the miracle of Montferrand.
And maybe Montferrand, if it weren't for the Bronze Horseman, wouldn't have given us such Isaac? He is the "Bronze Horseman" - you cannot say better than a poet, although today witches, of course, would call the monument to Peter somehow differently.
No matter how hard Tsereteli and Shemyakin tried to compete with the brilliant creation of Falcone, their monuments immediately received from the people a whole set of epithets, sometimes contemptuous, and sometimes simply lethal. "Bald stump" or "Stool". Just "Monster" or "Who has never seen the sea?" And in response - "Who, who … Petya in a leather coat." And much more in the same spirit.
Choose what you like, but they have no equal to Pushkin's "nickname" and never will. There will be no other monument truly worthy of the memory of the great reformer of Russia.
“Creator, reformer, legislator” - it is so simply and briefly said about Peter by Etienne Falcone. And how many things are in these three words at once. Each next ruler had plenty to choose from. But the first one was chosen by Catherine.
She has just settled on the throne. Reigns for only three years. She needs visible confirmation of the legitimacy of her own power. But she is patient - Catherine rejected the monument to Carlo Rastrelli, heavily frozen, like the Italian condottieri, Catherine immediately rejected. Peter has awakened Russia, his successor on the throne is not the one to let her fall asleep again.
And the monument to Catherine was needed to match the great deeds of the great tsar, who has … great heirs. And with Rastrelli, the sovereign seemed to have already achieved everything - and this is the sovereign of the state, which already needs almost nothing more.
Catherine's Russia needs everything and a lot, even a lot. The monument to Peter should become a bold point in a whole series of imperial symbols, created at the behest of the restless empress. She patiently seeks a sculptor worthy of such a task. There is someone to ask for advice - after all, from a young age, while still a Grand Duchess, Catherine entered into correspondence with the best minds of Europe.
The encyclopedist Diderot also suggested - Etienne-Maurice Falcone. Diderot, one might say, guessed right - from the works of the fifty-year-old Falcone really turned out only "Milon of Croton" and "Pygmalion". But as a theorist, he butchered all the "antiquities" before which cultural Europe was accustomed to adore without a doubt.
However, shortly before the St. Petersburg order, Falcone performed two chapels in the Parisian Church of St. Roch. They charmed the Russian ambassador, Prince Golitsyn, who supported Diderot.
Falcone is older than the Russian queen and is also patient, it is no coincidence that he was allowed to tinker with the monument for a decade and a half. However, they knew how to wait and endure then. It took a whole season just to transport the pedestal - "Thunder-stone" from Lakhta. From a technical point of view, the operation would have been difficult even today, but in the 18th century it would have been simply unique (read).
Neither Sanssouci, nor Versailles, nor Schönbrunn could afford anything of the kind. And how much time was spent on the choice of the pedestal, and it took almost a whole winter to convince the high-ranking critics - only the correspondence between Falcone and the president of the Russian Academy of Arts, Ivan Betsky, is two thick archival volumes.
Falcone, with his ambitions, turned out to be surprisingly modest - he did not hesitate to entrust the sculpting of the king's head to his student Marie-Anne Collot. It was unheard of in those days. But also, like Diderot, he guessed right. Collot did not copy the tonal mask of Peter of the teacher's work or the lifetime bust of Rastrelli, solving the problem as a true monumentalist.
The main thing is to grasp the character and not enter into dissonance with the equestrian statue itself. Bulging eyes, a voluminous forehead framed by strands thick like waves, an obvious tension of will on the face, a chin pushed forward - it would seem a banal set of well-known features, but on the whole - the impression is unique.
Here is an angry determination, and the ability to have mercy, here is wisdom, and simplicity, severity and calmness at the same time. It is known that Falcone many "rules" Collot, but in the end there is no doubt the unity, it is a pity that the role of the student is now remembered only by experts.
Catherine chose “her” Peter, talked a lot about him, wrote, but on the monument itself she noted very succinctly: “PETRO primo CATHARINA secunda”. And in Russian: “Peter the Great, Catherine the Second. Summer 1782.
Since then, Peter did not give rest to many of the Falconets. Inspired Pushkin. He got the nervous Emperor Paul so easily, without standing on the Senate Square for two decades. And Paul, having just ascended the throne, in opposition to his mother, erected another equestrian statue of Peter at the Mikhailovsky Castle. The works of Carlo Rastrelli are the very ones that the great empress once rejected. Ambitious “Pradadu Great-grandson. 1800 - also inscribed in spite of Catherine.
Pavel's youngest son Nikolai, as nervous as his father, but with a much colder mind, without unnecessary hesitation ordered to release a portion of grapeshot into the copper Peter, and at the same time into the Decembrists.
They say that her traces can still be seen on the fractures of the Thunderstone. Neither in the three Revolutions, nor in the Civil War, did anyone raise a hand against Peter. And later the fascist aces of the Luftwaffe were aiming at Peter - they never hit.
Pushkin let the mystics in, but the cold Nikolai Pavlovich, having “shot” Peter, immediately chose the image of a stoic tsar. The Bronze Horseman was then often compared with the ancient Roman Marcus Aurelius, although Falcone considered this very statue an example of how not to make equestrian monuments.
Under Tsar-Liberator Alexander II, Peter the Great was “presented” to the public as a reformer and almost a liberal, and at the same time decorated with flowers a la Russian tricolor. Alexander III and his unfortunate son pressed on the "nationality" of Pyotr Alekseevich, arranging a skating rink and festivities on Senate Square. The Slavophiles liked the formula very much: "The great leader of a great people."
After October 17th, no one, of course, voiced it in relation to Peter. But under Stalin, when "Peter the First" by the red Count Tolstoy saw the light, it was this interpretation that was implied as if by itself.
If the tyrant Ivan the Terrible was presented by the genius of Sergei Eisenstein and the brilliant game of Nikolai Cherkasov as such a fighter against the boyar bureaucracy, then God himself ordered Peter the Great to be turned into a “people's tsar”. And no one after the "leader of the peoples" himself has forgotten this formula. Still…
The sculptures are somewhat akin to warships. A true masterpiece, as a worthy opponent, is recognized by its silhouette. But the captains have been studying catalogs with the contours of enemy cruisers and destroyers for years, and the Bronze Horseman remains in the memory immediately and forever. However, in sculpture, just like the silhouette, the gesture is also important.
“He raised Russia on its hind legs” - that says it all about the monument as a whole. But what about the hand stretched out over the waves of the Neva? "Beneficent Right Hand", "Father's Hand". How long and difficult it is for Pushkin to pick up epithets - "Raising his hand in the sky", "A giant with an outstretched hand", "Threatening with a motionless hand"! In the very gesture - the focus of strength, mind, will. But not only - the hand of Peter - as a new vector for the new Russia.
"Window to Europe" - seems to be said, period. To the West - towards Europe. To be not just around, to be together. Be a worthy part of it. And there is no need to look for any inferiority complexes here.
Lev Gumilyov was absolutely right - we are Eurasia, not Azeopa. Azeopa is "beautifully" said by another historian, Pavel Milyukov. He said two hundred years after Peter, as if he had derailed everything that he bequeathed.
It is not surprising that the “temporary” ones with such a foreign minister had complexes in front of Europe, it’s not surprising that the “temporary” ones were so easily swept away by the Bolsheviks. The Urals are not a joke of geography, but our common border with Europe.
“Eurasia is not Azeopa,” Peter himself might have said long before Gumilev. He didn't say - he did everything to make it so!
