Contemporaries began to consider Catherine’s statue to Peter I, still in progress, to be a monument devoted to both emperors. All throughout his work, Falconet linked both Peter and Catherine to his project; in his letter to Catherine on August 15, 1767, he implies an aphoristic paraphrase of a few aphoristic verses from Horace’s ode I Have Completed a Monument (Horace, Odes III. 30): “Yes, Madame, as long as a bronze monument to Peter I and You exists,
45 Feofan Prokopovich, Sochineniia, 126.
46 V. A. Zhukovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 12 tomakh, X (Saint Petersburg, 1902), 31.
131 To p p l i n g t h e B r o n z e H o r s e m a n
your descendants will read on the pedestal: Falconet has completed this.”47 Horace ensured his immortal glory by composing his poetry that would last longer than any bronze statue. The sculptor, not without a certain curious irony, joined Horace’s tradition and projected his immortality upon his own creation. At the same time, he clearly professed the concept of a dual monument, and his sculpture incarnated the current political myth of Peter I, cultivated by Catherine, rather than immortalized him as an historical figure.
This sculptural project, as well as its interpretations, generated poetic metaphors that linked the two names together.
The idea of a monument to Catherine, to be erected in close proximity to Peter I’s monument, was already in the air. Having been inspired by Catherine’s military victories over the Turks, Voltaire, in his letter to the empress on December 3, 1771, suggested that the Russians should place Catherine’s statue directly in front of Peter’s.48 He continued to repeat his proposal, even though he knew that Catherine II had refused to have a monument built in her honor. Meanwhile, at the same time, poetry began to play the role of sculpture. Given the situation, the lyrical texts attempted to compensate for the lack of a physical bronze statue by developing the concept of an imaginary monument to Catherine. The praise accorded to Peter’s statue in poems, odes, and inscriptions turned into contributions to a kind of lyrical monument to the empress.
In the middle of the 1770s, the young Derzhavin wrote several drafts of his lyric On the statue of Peter the Great (На статую Петра Великого), thus proving the popularity of this concept; the poet treated Falconet’s project as a monument to Catherine’s own achievements. Derzhavin writes:
Catherine erected the statue of him (Peter. — V. P.) To make the Russians venerate. This is an image
of her deeds.49
47 Correspondance de Falconet avec Catherine II, 21.
48 Documents of Catherine the Great. The Correspondence with Voltaire, 145.
49 Sochineniia Derzhavina s ob’iasnitel’nymi primechaniiami Ia. Grota, III, 250.
In May 1770, a model of Falconet’s statue was unveiled at an exhibition at the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. It provoked a wide-spread discussion on the monument and its poetic interpretation as well. Poets composed verses and inscriptions devoted to all the significant episodes of the monument’s construction: the completion of Falconet’s large bronze model in 1769, its exhibition in 1770, the transportation of the Thunder Rock (for use as the statue’s pedestal) from the outskirts of the city to Senate Square, and — finally — the opening of the monument in 1782.
Already in 1769, an anonymous contributor to Catherine’s weekly All Sorts and Sundries published an inscription, entitled To the Statue of the Tsar Peter the Great (Ко статуи Государя Петра Великого).50 The author suggested that the situation would have been quite the opposite, that is, such a monument would have been erected in honor of Catherine II by Peter I, had the emperor lived during the present era:
This bronze presents the face
Of Peter the Great, father of the Fatherland;
He founded this city, built fleet and army;
He elevated Russia with his heroic deeds.
As a sign of gratitude from all of Russia, This image has been erected by Catherine.
But if Peter were to live now in Russia,
He would build a more gorgeous statue to Catherine.
Peter defeated all domestic and foreign enemies, Conquered sea and earth,
He brought glory and wealth to the Russians.
Peter has given us existence, while Catherine
has given us soul. 51
The author presents a detailed account of Peter’s achievements, but all his deeds are supposed to pale before the most significant accomplishment of Catherine. Under her rule, Russian has gotten a “soul,” while under Peter she received only physical existence.
50 Sumarokov’s authorship was repudiated by Sumarokov’s editor N. I. Novikov.
On the recent correction by N. D. Kochetkova see Petr v russkoi literature XVIII veka (Saint Petersburg, 2006), 414.
51 A. P. Sumarokov, Polnoe sobranie vsekh sochinenii v stikhakh i proze, 1, 266.
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This formula comparing the two emperors had appeared before, and the anonymous author most probably relied upon an official and politically engaged opinion. Not accidentally, the formula had first been first introduced in an official speech by Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi, Catherine’s closest courtier, politician, and the Director of the Bureau of Buildings (the government organ responsible for the monument).52 Soon after that, Mikhail Kheraskov composed a lyrical epilogue to his allegorical novel Numa Pompilius, or Flourishing Rome (Нума Помпилий, или Процветающий Рим). He makes a significant distinction between Peter and Catherine:
Above all other Sovereigns our Peter the Legislator!
He works, keeps vigil, and animates Russia, He renders a new heaven and a new world <…>
Then Catherine came, more beautiful than a lily of paradise, Flourishing in our eyes, Catherine!
She has no need for Nymphs or miracles;
She has not an idle hour,
She brings charity, peace, enlightenment;
She writes law which speaks truth <…>
Let the world share our joy, And set her example to all kings.
I would never disrespect the holy words:
Peter gave bodies to the Russians, while Catherine gave the soul.53 Kheraskov’s novel acquainted Russian riders with the story of Numa, Romulus’s successor and the second king of Rome. The life of a wise and generous king served as a historical projection of the rule of Catherine, the author of the recently published Instructions to the Legislative Commission of 1767. The Romans appreciated Numa’s lofty spiritual qualities and elected him in spite of his humble ancestry and poverty. The appointment of the sovereign based on his “achievements” (not on his blood or lineage) corresponded very well with the mythology of Catherine’s ascension. The Romans were
52 Ivan Betskoi, in his Senate’s speech on 11 August 1767, made a similar comparison: Riasanovsky Nicholas V., The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought, 37.
53 M. Kheraskov, Tvoreniia, XII (Moscow, 1803), 165.
not misguided: Numa’s “wisdom” brought prosperity to Rome.
Kheraskov’s description of an idealized Rome, already influenced by masonry, reflected early Masonic projects of an idyllic Russia under Catherine’s rule. In this context, the formula “body — soul”
(Peter I — Catherine II) acquired additional connotations. The Masonic circles looked forward to initiating a moral revival in Russia under the enlightened empress. As Kheraskov believed, Catherine had to carry out the sacred mission of spiritualizing or
“instilling soul” into the Russian “body,” Peter’s legacy.
The formula of comparing both kingdoms (and the distribution of Peter I’s and Catherine II’s roles) relied upon two traditions — Biblical and mythological or pagan. First, it invokes the famous passage from the Genesis: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul.”54 Second, it refers to the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, extremely popular at that time, which was well known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and from arts.
According to the Greek mythology, Pygmalion, a sculptor in Cyprus, carves a beautiful statue of a woman named Galatea, and then, after he falls in love with her, she comes to life. In and the visual rhetoric of the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the myth served as a vehicle to convey the concept of Peter as the sculptor of a rough and unshaped Russia.55 Feofan Prokopovich employs this metaphor in his speech on Peter I: “The whole of Russia is your statue, recreated by your great mastery <…>”56 Many writers, when trying to describe Peter’s age, often resorted to sculpture metaphors.
Nikolai Karamzin, in his unfinished essay Thoughts for a Laudatory Speech on Peter I (Мысли для похвального Слова Петру I; 1798) established a parallel between Peter and Pheidias, the Athenian sculptor, who had built the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Karamzin writes: “The art of Pheidias can excite us more if we look at an ugly piece of marble: from such a raw material he formed his Jupiter of
54 Genesis 2:7.
55 V. Iu. Matveev, “K istorii siuzheta Petr I, vysekaiush’ii statuiu Rossii,” in Kul’tura i iskusstvo Rossii XVIII v. Novye issledovaniia i materially (Leningrad, 1981), 26–43; G. Z. Kaganov, Peterburg v kontekste barokko, 174–175.
56 Feofan Prokopovich, Sochineniia, 144.
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Olympia!”57 According to Karamzin, Peter I “formed” Russia from a raw and unpolished substance, like God and the famous sculptor simultaneously.
The myth of Pygmalion proved its extreme popularity in Catherine’s time. For example, in 1763, Falconet cast his famous sculpture Pygmalion and Galatea, and in 1768, he made a gift to the Russian Academy of Arts of François Boucher’s painting on the same theme, Pygmalion and Galatea. Following the version of the myth in which Venus brings Galatea to life, Boucher places Venus, accompanied by Nymphs and Amours in the center of his work, between the sculptor and his creation. This work of Boucher is referred to in Kheraskov’s poem quoted above:
She has no need for Nymphs or miracles <…>58
Kheraskov means that Catherine animates Russia like Venus;
but, in distinction to the ancient goddess, the Russian empress can do it alone without help. The Pygmalion plot appeared again in 1776:
in September, the Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich married his second wife, Maria Fedorovna. On the occasion of the royal marriage, Vasilii Maikov composed a short piece — “a musical drama in one act,” entitled Pygmalion, or the Strength of Love, which was performed at the palace.59 In the mid-1770s, the Russian Academy of Arts commissioned the painter I. A. Akimov to produce a picture on the topic: Prometheus Makes a Statue by the Order of Minerva.60 The plot of the painting (currently held in the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg) follows the other version of the myth, in which Prometheus forms a man of clay, into whom Pallas Athena (Minerva in Latin) breathes a soul. The interpretation corresponded very well to the tendency, quite popular in the 1770s, to associate Catherine II with Minerva and Peter I — with Prometheus, the symbol of the founder of civilization.
57 N. M. Karamzin, Izbrannye stat’i i pis’ma (Moscow, 1982), 159.
58 M. Kheraskov, Tvoreniia, XII, 165.
59 Vasilii Maikov’s drama appeared in 1779.
60 I. V. Riazantsev, “Ekaterina II v zerkale antichnoi mifologii,” in Russkaia kul’tura poslednei treti XVIII veka — vremeni Ekateriny Vtoroi. Sbornik statei, 136.