Monument to Nicholas I

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The monument in the 21st century.

The Monument to Nicholas I (Russian: Памятник Николаю I) is a bronze equestrian monument of Nicholas I of Russia on St Isaac's Square (in front of Saint Isaac's Cathedral) in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Unveiled on June 25, 1859, the statue was a technical wonder of its time; it spans six meters and was the first equestrian statue in the world with merely two support points (the rear hoofs of the horse).

The Neo-Baroque monument to the Russian ruler Nicholas I was designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand in 1856. At the personal request of his successor Alexander II, Nicholas was represented as a prancing knight, "in the military outfit in which the late tsar was most majestic"^[1]. Around the base are allegorical statues modelled on Nicholas I's daughters and personifying virtues. The statue faces Saint Isaac's Cathedral, with the horse's posterior turned to the Mariinsky Palace of Nicholas's daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna of Russia. This was said to have caused the Grand Duchess considerable discomfort.

The monument to Nicholas I depicts a determined absolutist Russian ruler as a powerful military figure. However, being a junior army officer at heart, Nicholas I was especially devoted to his troops and intricately involved in the details of the military — from ordering the alteration of military uniforms to specializing in the engineering of military fortresses. At the same time, his despotic regime (1825-1855) saw the crushing of the liberal Decembrist revolt and the November Uprising in Poland.

The monument figures prominently in several works of fiction, including Andrei Bely's modernist novel Petersburg

Several different sculpture models were used in creating the monument. A large model of the horse which Nicholas I sits on was commissioned from the Tsar's favourite sculptor, Peter Klodt. The Russian masters Nicholas Ramazanov and Robert Salemann designed the model for the monument's pedestal. Salemann also sculpted the four allegorical female figures, steel fixtures, ornaments on the pedestal and a bas-relief in memory of the Delivery of the Codification of Law to Count Mikhail Speransky. It was mainly through the work of Speransky that a new code was introduced during Nicholas I's reign in January 1835, marking a milestone in Russian legal history.

The pedestal stands on a short platform made of red Finnish granite with three steps. The lower part of the pedestal is of dark gray granite and red porphyry. The middle part, hewn from a block of red Finnish granite, is decorated with bronze bas-reliefs. The upper part of the pedestal is made of red porphyry. The pedestal of the horse statue is made of white Italian marble.

The monument's technical proficiency was cited as a reason why this statue — the only one from a cluster of outdoor sculptures representing the 19th-century Russian royalty — survived the Soviet period virtually intact. However, a bronze fencing around the monument, first installed in 1860, was dismantled in 1940. It was restored in 1992.

[edit] Further reading

Монументальная и декоративная скульптура Ленинграда. [Monumental and Decorative Sculpture of Saint Petersburg]. / Сост. Е. В. Плюхин, А. Г. Раскин. Leningrad, 1991.