Later, by the time of the opening of the Bronze Horseman, the concept of the imagined monument to Catherine, built by Peter the First, was developed to an extreme. A. S. Khvostov, in his lyric inscription of 1782, not only compared both emperors, but also put Catherine in the first place. Mere chronology did not allow for an inversion of the situation:
If God, the creator of earthly order, had allowed That Catherine should have lived earlier than Peter, A miraculous rock, in that case,
Would now be given the image of Catherine, not Peter.61 This mythological concept influenced the choice of inscription made on the granite base of the Falconet’s monument: To Peter the First from Catherine the Second. This motto was carved out both in Russian and Latin: Petro Primo Catharina Secunda. The message, though it looked historically truthful, was absolutely symbolic, as it not only united the two names eternally, but also suggested their equality. The pure symbolism of the inscription was perfectly grasped by contemporaries. Discussing the appropriateness of the phrase in his letter to Catherine II on January 16, 1783, Melchior Grimm made a notice that the motto would look better with omitted numerals: Petro / Catharina.62 His version made this equation even more clear. Catherine replied to Grimm on March 9, 1783:
“Do criticize me: Petro Primo Catharina Secunda. I requested this inscription because I wanted people to know that it was me, and not his (Peter’s. — V. P.) wife.”63 Several reasons lay behind such a choice. First, she might have truly been afraid to be confused in the future with Catherine I, who reigned in 1725–1727. Catherine II made sarcastic comments on her female predecessor in her essay The Palace of Chesma.64 Second, she definitely liked Falconet’s laconic
61 A. L. Ospovat, R. D. Timenchik, Pechal’nu povest’ sokhranit’ (Moscow, 1987), 40.
62 Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obsh’estva 44 (1885), 310.
63 “Pis’ma Ekateriny Vtoroi baronu Grimmu”, in Russkii arkhiv 3 (1878), 88.
64 Zapiski imperatritsy Ekateriny Vtoroi (Saint Petersburg, 1907), 601.
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sentence, elegantly ornamented in the Roman style. The sculptor wrote to Catherine on August 14, 1770:
“I made the short inscription “Petro Primo Catharina Secunda posuit” on the base of the statue <...> It is in the best lapidary style, which the ancients successfully used for inscriptions on their monuments.”65
Meanwhile, this lapidary junction contained political implications. The inscription confirmed and even immortalized the main paradigm of Catherine’s legitimacy. It emphasized the concept of the rightness of her succession based not on blood or dynastic ties, but on her achievements and the qualities of her persona. Later, when Pavel Petrovich (Pavel I) came to the Russian throne, he made the monument as well as this inscription the objects of his political revenge. He attempted to rewrite the whole history of the monument to Peter I and to eliminate his mother (as a “usurper”) from the Saint Petersburg mythology. In 1800, in the courtyard of his Mikhailovskii Palace, he installed an old monument to Peter by Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli. In 1764, Catherine II had rejected this Baroque monument and decided to search for a new sculptor. Consequently, the old statue had been forgotten. Pavel had the monument recovered and a new inscription carved: To Grandfather from His Grandson. It was a demonstrative political act which targeted Catherine II and her inscription. Underscoring blood ties and direct male ancestry, Pavel restored the traditional model of the hereditary rights and buried Catherine’s concept of her ideological link with Peter I. Rastrelli’s monument was to cancel out Catherine’s monument to Peter and all of her reign as well.
The struggle between the monuments continued on.
Dissatisfied with the slow progress being made on his Mikhailovskii Palace (a gloomy unfinished castle instead became his main residence, as well as the place of his horrific death in 1801), Pavel ordered marble to be taken from St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which had been under construction since Catherine’s time, to speed up the process. Pavel instructed workers to finish the cathedral by laying
65 Correspondance de Falconet avec Catherine II, 134.
bricks on the marble foundation. Such a structure, with a marble base and a brick top, inspired an anonymous epigram which associated the two kingdoms — of Catherine’s and Pavel’s — with the two “layers” of the cathedral:
The monument matches the two kingdoms:
A marble ground floor goes to a brick top.66
The epigram referred to Catherine’s rule as an age of “marble”
and ridiculed Pavel’s time as much less noble and successful. It also inverted a very popular statement ascribed to Augustus, who said:
“I found Rome brick and left it marble.”
On August 8, 1782, the day after the statue’s unveiling, Catherine described her impressions in a letter to Grimm:
“Let’s say that he (Peter’s monument. — V. P.) was rather satisfied with his creation. Being emotional, I did not dare, for a long time, to look at him closely; when I looked around, I saw that everybody was in tears. He faced the side opposite the Black Sea, but the expression on his face proved he did not look at any side. He was rather too far away to speak to me; however, he seemed quite pleased <...>.”67
The opening ceremony was designed to demonstrate Catherine’s triumph: the bronze Peter (with whom the empress had an imagined conversation!) was assumed to be contented by the current condition of the city he founded. The monument was erected in front of the Senate (the symbol of Catherine’s successful legislative endeavors), near the Neva river (the shores had recently been covered with granite embankments). In addition, the empress mentioned that Peter’s head was not turned toward the Black Sea.
The Horseman was turned toward the north as a sign of Peter’s most successful political direction. The empress, thought she stressed her “emotional” condition, remained yet very ambitious and competitive toward Peter I. The Black Sea was her monumental achievement, as she had recently defeated the Turks and annexed
66 Russkaia epigramma vtoroi poloviny XVII–nachala XX v. (Leningrad, 1975), 189.
On different variants of the epigram see V. P. Stepanov, “Ubiistvo Pavla I i vol’naia poeziia”, in Literaturnoe nasledie (Leningrad, 1975), 78–86.
67 Russkii Arkhiv 3 (1878), 84.
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Crimea. She could not restrain herself from underlining her success in the southerly direction, as it looked especially distinguished in comparison to the failure of Peter’s army there, most notably in his Pruth campaign of 1711. Not by accident, the opening ceremony included the procession to the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Cathedral, where Catherine’s officers proudly put trophies, obtained during the war with the Turks, on Peter’s grave.