Monument to Alexander the Third. The history of the creation of the monument to Emperor Alexander III Material about the monument to Alexander 3

In July 1918, the pedestal of the monument was eliminated in 1931.

Story

Creation

It was decided to erect a monument to Alexander III in Moscow soon after the death of the autocrat in October 1894. At the direction of Emperor Nicholas II, in December of the same year, a committee for the construction of the sculpture was organized, and the Tsar appointed Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich as its head. A competition was announced throughout the country for the best design of the monument; a subscription was also opened to raise funds for its installation, as a result of which about 2.5 million rubles were collected. First place in the competition was taken by the work of sculptor Alexander Opekushin, the author of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow. Moscow architect Alexander Pomerantsev was appointed chief architect, and architect Karl Greinert was appointed chief engineer. Architects Franz Kognovitsky and Foma Bogdanovich-Dvorzhetsky also took part in the work on the monument. At the suggestion of historian Ivan Tsvetaev, the site chosen for the installation of the monument was the site in front of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Prechistenskaya Embankment, on which the Church of All Saints in Chertolye previously stood.

Construction of the monument lasted from 1900 to 1912. As Alexander Opekushin recalled, work on the sculpture was complicated by the fact that he had to sculpt the head of Alexander III twice:

Opening

The grand opening of the monument in the presence of representatives of all classes and members of the imperial family took place on May 30, 1912. At 8 o'clock in the morning, five cannon shots were fired from the Tainitskaya tower. At 10 o'clock at the entrance to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a religious procession began, led by Moscow Metropolitan Vladimir, Emperor Nicholas II, his mother Maria Feodorovna and wife Alexandra Feodorovna. After 360 celebratory shots and the performance of the Preobrazhensky March, the veil was removed from the sculpture, Metropolitan Vladimir sprinkled the monument with holy water and proclaimed many years to the Russian army and loyal subjects. 86 wreaths were laid at the monument, including wreaths from 80 Russian and foreign delegations. After inspecting the monument by members of the imperial family, the comrade of the chairman of the committee for the construction of the monument, Chamberlain Alexander Bulygin, read the text of the act transferring the monument to the jurisdiction of the Moscow city government. In the evening the city and the sculpture were illuminated. A 24-hour guard of honor from veteran soldiers was placed at the sculpture.

Liquidation

Dismantling of the monument began on July 17, 1918. The work was supervised by the assistant to the people's commissar of property of the republic, a member of the commission for the protection of monuments of art and antiquities of the Mossovet, architect Nikolai Vinogradov. The destruction of the monument was also supervised by the first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, Vladimir Lenin. Baron Karl von Bothmer wrote in his memoirs:

On May 1, 1920, on the site of the monument, in the presence of Lenin, the “Liberated Labor” monument was laid. On the surviving pedestal of the monument to Alexander III, a metal cartouche by sculptor Vera Mukhina was installed with the words “The monument to Liberated Labor will be built here.” The sculpture was not erected; the surviving pedestal of the monument to Alexander III was demolished along with the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1931. It was planned to build the Palace of the Soviets in their place, but this idea was later abandoned.

• Dismantling of the monument, 1918

Artistic Features

Made in the style of monumental realism, the bronze statue stood on a stepped red granite pedestal and faced the Moscow River. Opekushin depicted the king sitting on a throne in a robe with an imperial crown on his head. In the hands of Alexander III lay a scepter and an orb. The inscription was carved on the pedestal: “To the Most Pious, Most Autocratic Great Sovereign, our Emperor Alexander Alexandrovich of All Russia. 1881-1894". At its corners stood bronze double-headed eagles with outstretched wings by the sculptor Artemy Ober. Near the monument there was a low granite balustrade designed by Alexander Pomerantsev; a staircase descended from the monument to the river.

Contemporaries criticized the monument for being too monumental. A 1917 edition of a guide to Moscow described the monument as “too huge and heavy, [distinguished] by the extraordinary amount and richness of material spent on its construction.”

Numismatics

Notes

Literature

• Aglintseva T. A. The past in coins: commemorative coins of 1832-1991. - M.: Finance and Statistics, 1994. - 286 p. -

The monument to Alexander III is an equestrian statue of the Tsar the Peacemaker, which has a very difficult fate.

Initially, the sculpture was located on Znamenskaya Square. The competition for the creation of a monument project was initiated personally by Nicholas II. From numerous works, the authoritative commission chose the model by sculptor P. Trubetskoy.

The casting of the statue began in 1899, it was supervised by the famous Italian foundry maker E. Sperati. The pedestal, 3 meters high, was made of red granite by architect F. Shekhtel.

Work on the statue continued until 1909. To make it more convenient for the creators, the authorities allowed the construction of a foundry on Nevsky Prospekt. In preparation for casting the main monument, Trubetskoy made 8 models, four of which were made in full size. The sculptor also cast 2 copies of the monument.

Already at the preparatory stage, the future monument was criticized. Having seen the model of the sculpture, the brother of Alexander III said that he saw a caricature in front of him. All work could have been stopped if the statue had not attracted the attention of the emperor’s widow, who saw in it a close resemblance to her husband.

The monument to Alexander III is very different from the monuments that were customary in Russia to erect to sovereigns. Trubetskoy portrayed the emperor in a simple way, without ceremonial gloss, flattery or embellishment. A man with a big belly, in a simple sheepskin hat and rough clothes, sits on a water-carrying horse: the autocrat turned out to look like a policeman.

The sculpture is an accurate reflection of Trubetskoy’s creative methodology, who believed that a portrait should contain features characteristic of the person being depicted.

Nicholas II was disappointed by the monument. The Tsar even planned to send the sculpture to Irkutsk for installation. However, under pressure from the Dowager Empress, the Tsar allowed the statue to be placed in St. Petersburg.

The installation of the monument took place in 1909 and was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the founding of the Trans-Siberian Railway by Alexander III. Trubetskoy was not invited to the opening ceremony.

The people reacted coolly to the statue. Soon the jokers composed a humorous poem in which the granite pedestal was compared to a chest of drawers, a water-carrying horse to a hippopotamus, and the emperor to a fool in a hat.

The Bolsheviks who came to power did not stand on ceremony with the sculpture. The bronze shield with the inscription in honor of the Tsar was dismantled, and in its place was placed a board with mocking poems by the poet Demyan Bedny, in which Alexander III was called a “scarecrow.”

In 1937, the monument was dismantled and sent to the storerooms of the Russian Museum. The pedestal was crushed into several pieces to install busts on them.

In 1994, a decision was made to restore the monument and install it in front of the entrance to the Marble Palace. The sculpture still stands here.

The monument to Alexander III, erected near the Marble Palace, is not immediately recognizable as a monument to the penultimate Russian sovereign. There is nothing heroic, great power or pompous about him. Rather, it resembles a folklore image of some epic hero sitting on a gigantic horse. It is no coincidence that this monument is called the most striking antithesis of the Bronze Horseman. The impetuous impulse and proud embodiment of autocracy in the work of Falcone contrasts with the earthiness, emphasized by massiveness and solidity in the work of the Italian sculptor Paolo Trubetskoy.

First, the monument was erected on Znamenskaya Square in St. Petersburg in front of the Nikolaevsky Station building (current Vosstaniya Square) on January 28, 1909. The sculptor worked for eight years before the final version of the statue was achieved. Trubetskoy created 14 models, two of them life-size, but only the third large model received the approval of a special commission and the royal family.

The location of the monument is associated with the merits of Alexander III as the founder of the Siberian railway from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. Initially, the sculptor intended to sculpt the monarch seated, but in the second round he proposed two options for an equestrian statue of the emperor. For the figure of the horseman, Trubetskoy was posed by the sergeant-major of the palace department P. Pustov, who has a great resemblance to the emperor. For the horse's figure, a Percheron breed was chosen - heavy and massive, just to match the figure of the emperor. The casting of the monument was carried out by master foundry E. Sperati, who was specially invited from Turin. The pedestal is made of Valaam pink granite.

Immediately after the opening, the monument evoked the most controversial reviews, from enthusiastic to sharply critical. They said that this was a mockery of the autocracy, that it was unacceptable to sculpt the Tsar in the form of a fat idiot with a dull look from under frowning eyebrows, sitting on an equally fat, stubborn horse. Poems that are still alive today began to walk around the city:

There is a chest of drawers on the square,
There's a hippopotamus on the chest of drawers,
There's a fool on a hippopotamus,
On the back is a hat.

Nicholas II himself, according to Alexander Benois, expressed a desire to “send the monument to Siberia.” There was a legend in the city according to which the monument to Alexander III was supposed to be erected in the Ural Mountains, on the border of Europe and Asia, which is why it was created so massive and heavy. It was assumed that the monument would be viewed from the windows of a speeding train, from a great distance, so that the massiveness of the statue would not be so noticeable.

Paolo Trubetskoy himself spoke uniquely about the monument. When asked what idea was embedded in this monument, he laughed it off: “I don’t do politics. I depicted one animal on another.”

In the world history of monuments, the monument is considered an example of a grotesque solution to the image. It should be noted that during his lifetime, Alexander III was distinguished by his remarkable physical strength and gigantic height: 193 cm. He broke coins and bent horseshoes with his bare hands, and over the years he became obese and bulky. S. Yu. Witte wrote about him: “In appearance he looked like a big Russian peasant from the central provinces; a suit would suit him best: a sheepskin coat, a jacket and bast shoes.”

After the 1917 revolution, the monument was subject to widespread criticism. They scolded him as much as they could: a scarecrow, a brute, and a fool... In 1927, Demyan Bedny’s quatrain was carved on a granite pedestal:

My son and my father were executed during their lifetime,
And I reaped the fate of posthumous infamy:
I’m hanging here as a cast-iron scarecrow for the country,
Forever throwing off the yoke of autocracy.

In 1937, under the pretext of reconstructing Vosstaniya Square and laying tram tracks along Nevsky Prospekt, the monument was put into storage. In 1939 it was transferred to the State Russian Museum, and the monument was moved to the Mikhailovsky Garden. As they said then, he became a “prisoner of the Russian Museum.” During the siege, the monument had to survive a direct hit from an artillery shell, but, fortunately, it passed without a trace, since the museum staff covered the monument with sand as best they could, covered it with boards and covered it with logs on top.

After the Great Patriotic War, several stones from the monument's pedestal were used to create busts of heroes of the Soviet Union and a monument to Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1953, the monument was raised and moved to the courtyard of the Russian Museum. In the 80s, during the renovation of the Benois building, the statue was removed under a wooden cover and only in 1990 was released from this hiding place.

In 1994, an equestrian monument to Alexander III was erected near the Marble Palace. And, as it turned out, the city still remembers the riddle about the chest of drawers and the hippopotamus.

How to get there

The monument to Alexander III is located in front of the eastern facade of the Marble Palace. You can get to the Marble Palace as follows. From the Nevsky Prospect/Griboyedov Canal or Gostiny Dvor station, walk along Nevsky to the Griboyedov Canal, turn right and walk along the embankment of the Griboedov Canal past the Cathedral of the Savior on Spilled Blood to the bridge over the Moika River. Turn left, walk for a minute along the Moika embankment and turn right into Aptekarsky Lane, which will lead you to Millionnaya Street. The Marble Palace will be located on the right.

The monument to the founder of the Siberian Railway, the penultimate Russian Emperor Alexander III, does not outwardly resemble a statue of a member of the ruling royal family. Despite this, hundreds of tourists visit it every year, recalling the verse that appeared after the monument:

There is a chest of drawers on the square,
There's a hippopotamus on the chest of drawers,
There's a fool on a hippopotamus,
On the back is a hat.

History of the monument

Even before the completion of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1916, Alexander III, its founder, became almost a living legend. In honor of this solemn event, Nicholas II and other members of the imperial family decided to erect a monument. The author of the expected majestic monument was the Milanese sculptor P.P. Trubetskoy.

Work on modeling and creating the monument lasted from 1899 to 1909. A pavilion was specially built near the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, where the author P. Trubetskoy created prototype models of the future monument. After its opening in the spring of 1909, the architectural structure was discussed more than other city events.

Of course, instead of a royal, courageous emperor, people saw an ordinary commoner, completely different from the sovereign founder of the Great Siberian Road. Despite this, the monument continued to literally delight the townspeople with its appearance until 1937, when it was dismantled and put into the storerooms of the Russian Museum. Only in the 90s of the 20th century did an interesting statue of Alexander III rise at the entrance to the Marble Palace.

Interesting facts about the history of the monument

In addition to many mocking poems, the monument to Alexander III is shrouded in numerous stories and interesting facts:

• Prince Vladimir Alexandrovich, brother of Alexander III, even in the process of building the monument, saw in the model a caricature of his brother’s appearance and wanted to refuse the services of the Italian sculptor. But the emperor's widow Maria Feodorovna insisted on completing the work.

• At the beginning of hostilities in the 30-40s of the 20th century, in order to preserve the sculpture, the staff of the Russian Museum tried with all their might to dig a hole and lower the bronze structure into it, but due to the heaviness of the monument, nothing happened. Then the idea arose to simply cover the statue with sand, cover it with boards and cover it with logs. Despite all the manipulations done, the monument became the only place where an artillery shell directly hit. What’s interesting is that the pedestal survived and was completely intact.

• They planned to move the monument several times, but everything was unsuccessful. In 2013, the then Minister of Culture V. Medinsky proposed moving the architectural structure to Trinity or Konyushennaya Square.

There are rumors that the monument will soon move to its former location - Znamenskaya Square (Vosstaniya Square). However, no official statements were made in this regard and the monument itself can today be found near the Marble Palace.

Paolo Trubetskoy, the son of Prince P.I. Trubetskoy, who served in the Russian embassy in Florence, and the American Ada Vinas, was born in Italy.

P. Trubetskoy began to actively engage in modeling in Milan and since 1886 he exhibited his works at exhibitions in Venice, Milan, and Rome. In 1897, Trubetskoy was invited to teach at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, by which time he was already a famous sculptor. In 1900, at the World Exhibition in Paris, P. Trubetskoy, along with Rodin, was awarded the highest award, the Grand Prix.

Arriving in Russia, he became one of the founding members of the World of Art society. Over the years of work in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the sculptor created many images of L.N. Tolstoy, A.S. Pushkin, F.I. Chaliapin, but the monument to Alexander III became the most famous of them.
On November 25, 1899, the Ministry of Finance announced a competition to create a monument to Emperor Alexander III, the founder of the Siberian railway from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. The completion of the road construction was scheduled for 1902. They wanted to coincide with the same year for the opening of the monument on Znamenskaya Square (now Vosstaniya Square), in front of the Nikolaevsky (Moskovsky) station building. Famous sculptors and architects of that time took part in the competition.

Paolo Trubetskoy, who lived in Moscow at that time, initially proposed a sketch of a statue of a seated Alexander III (cast in bronze from the State Russian Museum), but in the second round the sculptor proposed two options for equestrian monuments, only the pedestals differed significantly.

So in one of the sketches the pedestal looked like a wild rock on which an equestrian monument rose.

Much to Trubetskoy’s chagrin, Emperor Nicholas II approved the second option, with a pedestal by Shekhtel, quadrangular in plan, on both sides of which there were plot bas-reliefs depicting the conquest of Siberia by Ermak and the meeting of the first railway train by the inhabitants of Siberia (the sculptor subsequently abandoned them).

N A small sketch of an equestrian statue, executed by Trubetskoy in 1905, cast in bronze, is kept in the Pavlovsk Palace Museum. It was transferred to the scale of the monument, with only minor changes.

Empress Maria Feodorovna found the figure of the horseman similar—the sergeant major of the palace department, P. Pustov, posed for Trubetskoy. The heavy Percheron, so suitable for his powerful stature, according to contemporaries, was the emperor’s favorite horse. The casting of the monument was carried out by master foundry E. Sperati, who was specially invited from Turin. The monument was converted into bronze in parts: the figure of the emperor in the workshop of K. Robecki, the horse in the Obukhov steel plant. The pedestal is made of Valaam pink granite.

Serious preparatory work was carried out on Znamenskaya Square, and a complex foundation was created. The grand opening of the monument took place on May 23, 1909.

The appearance of the monument in the city was a real event; contemporaries gave it conflicting assessments. In addition to rave reviews, there were sharply negative ones.

P. Trubetskoy himself said: “I am inclined to explain the negative attitude towards me from the public to a large extent by a certain originality, novelty... It is all the more understandable since St. Petersburg is not at all accustomed to a new word in this field of art... They still give me reproach the fat horse. But I had to choose a heavy horse for the monument, taking into account the heroic figure of the Tsar...”

P. Trubetskoy was the first and most consistent representative of impressionism in sculpture. These tendencies were clearly manifested in his easel sculpture and in the genre of portraiture. But here the sculptor deliberately abandoned his impressionistic plastic language. The monument has become a kind of antithesis " To the Bronze Horseman ».

In the world history of monuments, the monument is considered an example of a grotesque solution to the image. At the same time, we can agree with the point of view that the talented sculptor turned to a national theme. Alexander III is presented in the image of a powerful and calm hero. The horse matches the rider.

The most important service of Alexander III to the Fatherland is that during all the years of his reign, Russia did not wage wars. Alexander III remains to this day the only ruler of our state, since the 9th century, during which there was not a single war. For which he received his nickname "Peacemaker".

At the turn of the century, sculpture was looking for other ways of development, not classicist ones. The result of such a search for a plastic language was a monument that received a lot of criticism.

In the first post-revolutionary years, the fate of the monument was sad. In 1919, the quatrain of D. Bedny was engraved on the pedestal and above it was the inscription:

SCARECROW

My son and my father were executed during their lifetime,
And I reaped the fate of posthumous infamy,
I’m hanging here as a cast-iron scarecrow for the country,
Forever throwing off the yoke of autocracy.

On the night of October 15, 1937, the monument was dismantled and transferred to a warehouse. In 1939, the monument was transferred to the State Russian Museum, the monument was moved to Mikhailovsky Garden .

During the siege, the monument was protected with sandbags. After the Great Patriotic War in 1950, three stones were removed from the pedestal, which were used to create busts of heroes of the Soviet Union and the monument to Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1953, the monument was raised and moved to the courtyard of the Russian Museum.

In the 80s, during the renovation of the Benois building, the statue was removed under a wooden cover and only in 1990 was released from this hiding place.

In the late 1990s, an equestrian monument to Alexander III was erected at Marble Palace. Today, the possibility of returning the monument to its historical place cannot be ruled out, in connection with the reconstruction of the territory of Vosstaniya Square.

Compiler of the article: Parshina Elena Aleksandrovna. Used literature: Lisovsky V.G. Architecture of St. Petersburg, Three centuries of history. Slavia., St. Petersburg, 2004 Monument to Alexander III, sculptor Paolo Trubetskoy. PALACE EDITION. State Russian Museum., St. Petersburg, 1994. © E. A. Parshina, 2009