Any new monument that was ostensibly connected to Peter I received an additional meaning under Catherine: contemporaries considered it to be a monument to Catherine as well. In 1768, St.
Isaac’s Cathedral started to be built according to the design of Antonio Rinaldi. Predating the cathedral, St. Isaac’s Church was founded in Peter I’s time and opened on May 30, 1707, the Emperor’s birthday.
The church was named in honor of the saint Isaakii Dalmatskii, on whose name day Peter the First was born. The church had become completely dilapidated by Catherine’s time. On May 30, 1768, the cathedral was solemnly reopened.
It was a symbolic action: in place of a small church (as commissioned by Peter I, it had been remolded from an old drawing barn), a grandiose five-dome marble cathedral was erected. Rinaldi preserved. The style of early Petrine architecture in the new structure: the neo-classical cathedral with its three-story tower-like structure maintained a stylistic connection to the old church to St. Isaac. According to the design, St. Isaac’s Cathedral should exceed the grandeur of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the tallest and most significant Saint Petersburg architectural spire. The name
“Peter and Paul” invoked a potentially dangerous association for Catherine: any links between her son Paul, that is, Pavel, and Peter I could provoke the burning question of Pavel’s legal right to the
34 Adrian Gribovskii, Zapiski o imperatritse Ekaterine Velikoi (Moscow, 1864), 40.
35 I. M. Dolgorukii, Sochineniia, 1 (Saint Petersburg, 1849), 229.
125 To p p l i n g t h e B r o n z e H o r s e m a n
Russian throne (see Chapter 3.). The mere conjunction of the names of these two saints (Peter and Paul) could easily incite concern for Pavel Petrovich, Peter’s grandson and a legitimate heir, who was denied the throne by his mother. The “neutral” name of St. Isaac respectably commemorated Peter the First, and, at the same time, eliminated politically explosive issues.
In response, A. P. Sumarokov made a poetic inscription devoted to the future cathedral. He also invoked the comparison of Peter I to Catherine II here. Imitating the Baroque style of Lomonosov’s early laudatory inscriptions, Sumarokov writes:
Peter the Great was given to Russia on St. Isaac’s day, God was generous to the Russian kingdom on that day;
That was the reason to set up a splendid cathedral, Which Catherine had built.36
Seemingly, Sumarokov was not satisfied by this poem. At the same time, he composed a second inscription to the cathedral in which, besides suggesting political implications, he tried to find a more appropriate modern language instead of that of the Baroque genre. A refined poetic language allowed the poet to develop a clearer concept of the Peter — Catherine comparison:
The day to glorify Isaac was established, Peter was born on this saint’s day:
The shores of the Neva proclaim it,
The thunder of bombardment is heard in the air Near Peter’s walls;
Wisdom creates a home for God.
It will shine like a lily of paradise;
The splendor to this day Is given
By Catherine the Great.37
Here two ideas are fused. In this poem, Catherine is called as great as Peter, and she even appears to be more powerful, since she constructed the cathedral to Peter I and brought splendor to
36 A. P. Sumarokov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v stikhakh i proze, 1, 269.
37 Ibid, 272.
the country. In 1767, Falconet began to design an equestrian statue to Peter I. The work provoked a new round of discussions on the sensitive topic of the comparison of the two epochs. By the end of September a huge rock, called “the Thunder Rock” by residents of Saint Petersburg, had been delivered to the place of construction.
The rock was to serve as the monument’s pedestal. Its enormous size, as well as the difficulties involved in transporting it (it was a complicated project to engineer) became a popular topics for cultural reflection.
Vasilii Ruban, Catherine’s so-called “pocket poet,” solemnly describes this event in his laudatory inscription. The poem praises this gigantic rock as a natural monument “not made by human hands.” The inscription was appreciated even by opposing circles of writers and was published in Nikolai Novikov’s Essays for the Historical Dictionary of Russian writers:
The Colossus of Rhodes, restrain your proud look.
Sky-scraping pyramids of the Nile, Cease to be called miracles!
You were built by human hands:
Here the Russian rock, not by hands made, Following God’s voice in Catherine’s speech, Came to Peter’s city across the Neva’s depths, And fell down under the Great Peter’s feet.38
Work on the monument to Peter I began in 1767. Started in the first years of Catherine’s reign, the monument was finished in 1782 as the utmost triumph of her rule. The statue, highly elevated above a rough-hewn rock, symbolized the victory over the old, barbaric pre-Petrine Russia. Falconet was not simply a sculptor; he was a thinker, deeply influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. He consciously created an elaborate design, according to which the pedestal had to remain “natural,” even “wild.”
Falconet refused to follow the well-known classical pattern established by the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.39 He
38 N. Novikov, Opyt istoricheskogo slovaria o rossiiskikh pisateliakh (Saint Petersburg, 1772), 191–192.
39 H. Dieckmann and J. Seznec, “The Horse of Markus Aurelius. A Controversy between Diderot and Falkonet,” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
127 To p p l i n g t h e B r o n z e H o r s e m a n
considered a bronze statue to be too old-fashioned, too distant from any ideological expressiveness. In 1770 the sculptor wrote a special work entitled Comments on the statue of Marcus Aurelius (Observations sur la statue de Marc-Aurèle).
The general design of Peter’s monument as the Bronze Horseman, placed on a rock, first came into Falconet’s mind in Paris, during his conversations with Denis Diderot. It was Diderot who produced the first draft of Falconet’s project. At the beginning of September of 1766, soon after Falconet left for Saint Petersburg, Diderot sent him a letter describing his ”vision” for the statue:
“Sharpen your pencil, take a stick and show them your hero astride, on a fierce horse that ascends a huge rock serving him as a pedestal, and chases away barbarism. Let sparkling water pour out of the clefts of the rock; gather all the streams in a wild, unpolished basin. Serve the common wealth without harming poetry; let me see the Barbarian, with long hair, half weaved in plait, with a body clothed in animal skin; with furious eyes looking ferociously at your hero; at the same time frightened and ready to be crushed by the hooves of his horse. Let the People’s Love stand aside, looking at him and thanking him, with arms outstretched toward their leader. Let the Symbol of the Nation be placed on the other side, down on the earth, relaxing and enjoying peace, calm, and security <…>”40
Falconet always kept in mind that the first sketch of his monument had been done in Paris, ”on the corner of a table” in Diderot’s salon. However, the sculptor did not accept the extended project described in his friend’s letter. Falconet considered Diderot’s project too “allegorical” and “literary.” He believed that there was a distinct difference between the symbolisms of bronze and literary images. The sculptor refused to decorate his monument with figures which he found more appropriate for literary expression.
The embodiment of ideas and passions in bronze should be more laconic and restrained. He replied to Diderot from Petersburg on February 26, 1767:
Institutes, 15 (1952), 198–228.
40 Denis Diderot, Correspondance, 6 (Paris, 1961), 329.
“The monument will be executed in a simple way. There will be no Barbarian, People’s Love, or Symbol of the Nation.
Perhaps such figures would insert more poetry into a literary work, but in my business and when you are fifty years old, you need to make things easier if you want to accomplish your work. In addition, Peter the Great himself is the subject and its symbol: it should be shown. Therefore, I decided upon a statue of a hero presented not as a great commander or conqueror, though, undoubtedly, he was that, too. I have to show humanity a much more tremendous image — a figure of his country’s founder and benefactor. <…> The tsar does not grasp a scepter in his arms; he holds his beneficent hand over the country which he gallops through. He ascends the rock which serves him as a foundation — an emblem of difficulties that he has overcome. Thus, the hand of the patron, the gallop up the rock is the plot that Peter the Great suggests. Nature and the resistance of his people were his main obstacles; his strength and the firmness of his genius prevailed over them.
He has quickly accomplished good deeds that people did not want.”41
All along, Falconet discussed his perception of Peter I as well as the design of his monument with Catherine II. Their correspondence sheds light on the creation of the monument and the political associations surrounding it. Falconet’s approach to Peter‘s deeds was quite controversial. On June 21, 1767, he wrote to the empress that Peter I guided his country as though it were a “blind and deaf mass” that he sometimes had to strike with his scepter.42 On the other hand, the sculptor, as a representative of the age of Enlightenment, rushed to justify Peter’s oppressive actions on the basis of progress and westernization. Falconet came to the conclusion that he had to reduce all the historical and national connotations inherent in Peter’s image and emphasize what he called the ”symbolic” essence of his achievements. In his view, Peter should be dressed in a universal “hero’s costume,” devoid of any reference to time or place.43 The sculptor disapproved of any
41 Ibid, 7, 33.
42 Correspondance de Falconet avec Catherine II. 1767-1778 (Paris, 1921), 18.
43 Ibid, 8.
129 To p p l i n g t h e B r o n z e H o r s e m a n
suggestions to embellish the Bronze figure with Roman or Russian cloth.44
Quite surprisingly, Catherine II, despite the dissent of many loud voices, agreed with Falconet’s plans for the monument.
Earlier, in 1764, she had already rejected a few proposals for a monument to Peter that had been put forth by the academician Iakov Shtelin. She disliked the idea of a pedestal with bas-reliefs on all four sides which represented the most glorious moments of Peter’s reign. The empress also abandoned C. B. Rastrelli’s idea of using an old pedestal for the monument. This pompous Baroque monument would also have bas-reliefs that related Peter’s triumphs. Evidently, the empress preferred to have a symbol, not a narrative.
Catherine completely shared Falconet’s vision, as their correspondence attests. From the beginning stages of the monument’s inception, she rejected projects that depicted the key events of Peter I’s reign on the pedestal along with the founder himself. She also preferred to imagine a symbolic figure, devoid of any real historical context. At that time, her conviction was that the monument should exemplify some sort of ancient mythological hero or colossus who fundamentally transformed Russian life. She prized Falconet’s retrospective utopia which dealt with metaphorical concepts, symbolical visions, and liberated posthumous interpretations. The design of the Bronze Horseman epitomized the emergence of two differently-oriented ideas: the strategy of the Enlightenment (Falconet) and the imperial imagination, based on mythological grounds and mixed with the needs of real-life politics (Catherine). Both interpretations incorporated the following logic: Peter I has tamed chaotic, natural forces (like building Saint Petersburg in an environment characterized by moors, ice, and wild woods), while Catherine is polishing the country, ”the rock,“
further.
The pedestal as a rock also had obvious biblical associations (Mathew, 16:18), which were associated with Peter’s name:
“Peter” means “stone” in Latin. The Russian religious and
44 Ibid, 129.
rhetorical tradition already had a history of using this metaphor.
For example, a famous panegyrist of the Petrine era, Feofan Prokopovich, archbishop of Pskov and Narva, declares in his well-known Speech on Peter the Great’s funeral on March 8, 1725 that Peter found a Russia that was weak but made it stone, as his name indicated.45
This metaphor, which compares monuments to the reigns of emperors, remained in the Russian cultural canon. Later, in 1834, when Alexander’s Column had been erected in Saint Petersburg, the poet Vasilii Zhukovskii recalled Falconet’s ”wild” monument.
He wrote in his Memoir on the Ceremony of August 30, 1834:
“On the Neva’s shores, there is a wild and shapeless rock, with a colossal horseman on it <…>. From its vantage point, a newly erected colossus is now visible, and the pillar is not wild or built of shapeless stones, like the first one, but well-proportioned, magnificent, adroitly shaped. <…> Russia was a shapeless rock before, but now it is a column, well-proportioned, and unique in its greatness.”46
Zhukovskii implies here an old paradigm: a “well-proportioned” Alexander’s Column became a symbol of the new kingdom of Alexander I that was interpreted against the background of the hulking, uncultivated mass of the Petrine epoch, symbolized by Falconet’s Bronze Horseman.