Monument to Peter the Great in front of the Michaelsburg
The monument of Peter the Great ( Russian памятник Петру I ) is a bronze equestrian statue of Peter the Great in front of the Michaelsburg in St. Petersburg , Russia .
In 1716, Emperor Peter the Great commissioned the Italian sculptor Bartolomeo Carlo Rastrelli to design an equestrian statue commemorating the Russian victories over Sweden in the Great Northern War . Rastrelli worked with a model of the monument for eight years before it was approved by the emperor in 1724. However, when the emperor died the following year, the work was stopped. The casting of the sculpture was not completed until 1747, after the sculptor died, and initially remained in a warehouse on site. It was not erected until 53 years later. In the meantime, Catherine the Great had commissioned another monument in memory of her predecessor Peter the Great: the bronze rider .
It was not until 1800, during the reign of Paul I , that the monument to Peter I was finally erected. It was placed on a plinth of Finnish, red and white shaded marble adorned with bas-reliefs. These show scenes from two Russian victories over Sweden during the Great Northern War, the Battle of Poltava and the Sea Battle at Hanko . These victories achieved under Peter the Great helped Russia become the dominant power in the north of the continent. There is also an allegorical composition with trophies.
On the orders of Paul I, the inscription "For the great-grandfather, from the great-grandson" (Прадеду - правнук) was placed on the base, a subtle but obvious allusion to the Latin inscription petro primo catharina secunda , the dedication of Catherine the Great on the monument of the bronze rider.
During the Second World War , the statue was removed from its base in order to protect it from the Germans during the 861-day siege of the city. In 1945 it was restored and put back on its base.
Web links
Individual evidence
- Leningrad: Monumentalnaya i Dekorativnaya skulptura 18-19 vekov , ed. EN Petrovoy. Chudozestvennye sokravisca SSSR: Moscow, 1951.
- Pamyatniki architektury Leningrada: Architectural monuments of Leningrad: Glavnoe architekturno-planirovocnoe upravlenye ispolnitelnogo komiteta Leningradskogo gorodskogo Soveta deputatov trudyaschisha, Gosudarstvennaja inspekciya po ochrane pamyatnikov , ed. 1976, Leningradskogo po ochrane pamyatnikov , ed.
Coordinates: 59 ° 56 ′ 21.1 ″ N , 30 ° 20 ′ 18.6 ″ E