Monument to Emperor Alexander III - a monument to the Russian Emperor Alexander III by sculptor Paolo Trubetskoy. Erected in 1909 on Znamenskaya Square in St. Petersburg. Now it is located in the courtyard of the Marble Palace.
The monument, as they wrote at the time of creation, is dedicated to
"Emperor Alexander III, the Sovereign founder of the Great Siberian
Route."
The customers of the monument were Emperor Nicholas II
and members of the royal family.
In 1899, a special "Commission
for the Competition" was created to create a monument in St. Petersburg.
Five years earlier, the "Committee for the organization of the
competition and the construction of a monument to Alexander III for
Moscow" had already begun to work in Moscow.
From 1894 until his
tragic death, Pyotr Nikolaevich Trubetskoy was a member of the Moscow
Committee. As stated in the document of those years, “The Moscow
Provincial Marshal of the Nobility, Jägermeister of the Highest Court,
Prince P.N. Trubetskoy, was a member of the Committee for the Highest
Command.” By the way, Pyotr Nikolayevich was a cousin of the Italian
sculptor Paolo Trubetskoy, who arrived in Russia in 1897 at the
invitation of his relatives.
In March 1900, a specially created
"Commission for the Competition" for the creation of a monument in St.
Petersburg, after long discussions, according to the results of the
second round, nevertheless settled on the project of Paolo Trubetskoy,
who lived at that time in Moscow. The project of an equestrian monument
with a pedestal, proposed by architects A. O. Tomishko and F. O.
Shekhtel, was adopted as the main option.
Paolo Trubetskoy worked
on the sculpture of Alexander III from 1899 to 1906, before going
abroad. To create the monument, a special workshop-pavilion made of
glass and iron was built on Staro-Nevsky Prospekt, not far from the
Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In the preparatory stage, Trubetskoy created
eight small-sized models, four life-size and two on the scale of the
monument itself.
S. Yu. Witte in "Memoirs" complains about the
"quarrelsome character" of the sculptor. Trubetskoy, obviously, did not
take into account the opinion of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, who
saw in "Trubetskoy's model a caricature of his brother." However, the
Empress Dowager, satisfied with the clearly expressed portrait
resemblance, contributed to the completion of the work on the monument.
The monument differed significantly from many official royal
monuments; the sculptor was far from idealization, from striving for
splendor. Alexander III is depicted in baggy clothes, sitting heavily on
a heavy horse, did not correspond to generally accepted ideas about
emperors. As in many works, the author's creative credo is vividly
embodied here, saying that “a portrait should not be a copy. In clay or
on canvas, I convey the idea of a given person, the general,
characteristic that I see in him. Regardless of the degree of
reliability of the words attributed to Trubetskoy, “I am not involved in
politics. I depicted one animal on another,” the monument evokes a
feeling of a dull pressing force. A. Benois noted that this feature of
the monument "is due not just to the master's luck, but to the deep
penetration of the artist into the task."
Even before the opening
of the monument, the sculptor felt an unfriendly attitude on the part of
many members of the royal family and senior officials. Nicholas II
wanted to move the monument to Irkutsk, “send him into exile in Siberia,
away from his offended sons’ eyes,” and erect another monument in the
capital. S. Yu. Witte recalls that the sculptor did not even receive an
invitation to the grand opening of the monument in time and arrived in
St. Petersburg later.
The production of bronze sculpture was
carried out in St. Petersburg in the absence of a sculptor. The Italian
caster E. Sperati cast the monument in parts: the figure of Alexander
III - in the workshop of the caster K. A. Robecchi, the horse - at the
Obukhov steel plant.
The pedestal, simplified in comparison with
the original plan, in the form of a rectangular parallelepiped, was made
of Valaam red granite.
The total height of the monument is 8.5
meters. The height of the figure is 5 meters, the base is more than 3
meters.
N. N. Wrangel, who highly appreciated the art of
Trubetskoy, called the monument to Alexander III "the most unsuccessful
of his works <...> which Trubetskoy performed not as a monumental
structure, not as a symbolic decoration of the square, but as an
accidental moment, like a small statuette."
Nevertheless, on May
23 (June 5), 1909, in the Highest Presence, the monument was consecrated
and solemnly opened; the service was led by Metropolitan Anthony
(Vadkovsky), the sculptor P. Trubetskoy was not at the opening of the
monument; “at the end of the ceremonial march, members of the commission
for the construction of the monument, headed by senior secretary. gr.
Witte and chairman of the commission, chamberlain Prince. Golitsyn, had
the good fortune to introduce themselves to Their Majesties.
As a monument dedicated to the "Sovereign Founder of the Great
Siberian Way", the monument lasted 8 years - until March 1917. After the
February Revolution of 1917, by decision of the commission of the
Provisional Government, the monument was periodically covered with
decorative compositions, changing the design depending on the upcoming
revolutionary event.
After the October Revolution, a poem by
Demyan Poor "Scarecrow" was carved on the pedestal in 1919. In this
form, he is shown in an episode of the film "Cutter from Torzhok"
(1925).
In 1927, on the tenth anniversary of October, the
monument once again served as the basis for festive decoration. In the
center of the square stood a sculpture of the emperor, enclosed in a
metal cage, and a vertical structure with revolutionary symbols. The
author of the decorative composition was Academician of Architecture
(since 1915) I. A. Fomin.
On October 15, 1937, the monument to
Alexander III was dismantled and moved to the courtyard of the Russian
Museum.
During the siege of Leningrad, the monument was protected
from enemy bombardment by log flooring and sandbags.
After the
Great Patriotic War in 1950, three stone blocks were removed from the
dismantled pedestal, which were used to create busts of Heroes of the
Soviet Union in Victory Park and a monument to composer N. A.
Rimsky-Korsakov.
In 1953, the monument was moved to the courtyard
of the Russian Museum. In the 1980s, during the renovation of the Benois
building, the sculpture was removed under a wooden cap and only in 1990
was released from this shelter.
In 1994, an equestrian statue of
Alexander III was installed in front of the entrance to the Marble
Palace, which became a branch of the Russian Museum. Previously, the
Marble Palace housed the Museum of V. I. Lenin, in front of which, since
1937, there was an armored car "Enemy of Capital" (moved to the Museum
of Artillery and Military Engineering Troops).
In 2013, Vladimir
Medinsky, who at that time held the post of Minister of Culture,
proposed to move the monument to Alexander III under the pretext that
the monument was “crowded” at its current location. Proposals were put
forward to move the monument to Konyushennaya or Troitskaya Square, and
even return it to Vosstaniya Square.
This proposal was discussed
in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg; the proposal to move the
monument to Uprising Square was rejected, and the transfer to
Konyushennaya was considered untimely.
When rumors once again
appeared in January 2020 about the seemingly possible relocation of the
monument to Alexander III from the Marble Palace to another place,
Alexander Rzhanenkov, chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for
Social Policy, at a press conference held by Interfax on January 17,
2020, officially stated, that there were no such plans.
During
the years of moving the monument, the saber of the king lost the lanyard
of St. George, and the reins were also not preserved. Until these items
are restored.