Western influence was very strongly felt in sculpture and painting
in Russia during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Narrowly
confined to the representation of conventional types of saints,
these arts did not acquire either personality or expression for
two centuries. It was not until the Eighteenth Century that they
began to raise statues to the memory of Russia's great men: one
of the first monuments was consecrated, as was indeed just, to
Peter the Great, Russia's great reformer; in his lifetime, Count
Bartolomeo Rastrelli the sculptor, father of the architect, executed
a _Peter the Great on Horseback_, which was cast in bronze in 1847;
but the successors of Peter the Great did not like this group which
they did not consider sufficiently animated and would not allow
it to be erected on a public square. Catherine II. had Falconet
model a _Peter the Great_ mounted on a fiery horse climbing up
a rock; this bronze group is placed in the centre of the Square
of Peter the Great on the Neva, at St. Petersburg. Among the most
celebrated works of Russian sculpture, we may cite the bronze monument
erected to the memory of Prince Poyarski and the butcher Minine
on the Red Square, Moscow (by Martoss, rector of the Academy of
Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, in 1888); Lomonossov's monument (by
Martoss); those of Generals Barclay de Tolly and Koutousov (1818-1836
after the model by B. Orlovski, placed in front of the Cathedral
of Kazan, St. Petersburg); the colossal bust of Alexander I. (by
Orlovski); the commemorative monument of Alexander I. (1832, by
Montferrand), with a statue of the Angel of Peace, by Orlovski;
the statue of Krilov, the fabulist, 1855, by Baron Clodt in the
Summer Garden, St. Petersburg; an equestrian statue of the emperor
Nicholas I. (by Clodt, 1859, on the St. Mary square); the monument
of Novgorod, elevated in memory of the millenary of the Russian
occupation (1862), in the form of a gigantic bell containing scenes
from Russian history, by Mikiechin; the monument to Catherine II.
by Mikiechin, she being represented as surrounded by her generals
and statesmen (1874, before the Alexander Theatre); the monument to
Pushkin in Moscow (1830, by Objekuchin and Bogomolov); the monument
to Bohdan-Chmelnizki, at Kiev (1873, by Mikiechin and other sculptors).
The principal Russian sculptors are Popov, Antokolski (statue of Ivan
the Terrible, 1871, in St. Petersburg), Tchichov and E. Lanceray.
They are characterized by a very pronounced realism that is common
to all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account