Monument to Peter I description and photo - Russia - Leningrad region: Vyborg (Topic)

Monument to Peter I description and photo - Russia - Leningrad region: Vyborg. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photos and a map showing the nearest significant objects.

Photo and description

In the year of the 200th anniversary of the capture of the Vyborg fortress in 1908, Emperor Nicholas II turned to the military commander of the city with a proposal to erect a military cathedral in honor of this date and erect a monument to Peter I. in Vyborg.

The project of the monument was commissioned to develop the sculptor L.A. Bernshtam. The opening took place on June 14, 1910. The figure of Tsar Peter is installed on a 3-meter pedestal from a monolithic lump of pink granite brought from Vakhkalahti. The name of the king is engraved on it. Peter stands at the cannon, his left hand is on the hilt of the sword, in his right hand is the plan of the siege of the Vyborg fortress. There is an illusion of movement in the figure - the uniforms seem to be blown in by the wind.

The contemporaries of the sculptor L.A. Bernshtam talked about that he tried to give his works the maximum resemblance to the original or to the image of a person and tried to avoid sharp features.

L.A. Bernshtam devoted a lot of time to working on the image of Tsar Peter in sculpture. The monument in Vyborg is not his only work dedicated to Peter. In 1919, the monuments to the tsar in front of the eastern and western pavilions in the Admiralty in St. Petersburg were recognized as "anti-artistic" and were dismantled. One of the statues was called "Tsar Carpenter". Exactly the same monument from 1911 to the present day is located in the central square of Zaandem in Holland. The second monument depicted Peter, rescuing the Lakhta fishermen. It is known that the king after that incident caught a cold and died.

The sculptor Leopold Adolfovich Bernshtam was born in Riga in 1859. He successfully graduated from the famous St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Bernshtam received recognition after he was able to create 30 busts of the great cultural figures of Russia in a very short time. Beginning in 1885, Bernshtam lived in Paris. He was commissioned for sculptural portraits by G. Flaubert and E. Zola. He lived in Paris all his life. L.A. Bernshtam died in 1939.

When in the 30s of the 20th century on the Panzerlax bastion, the construction of the museum of arts and the school of painting was completed, the monument to Peter was sent to the opened museum.

On the site of the monument in In December 1927, in honor of the 10th anniversary of Finland's independence, a monument to Independence was erected by sculptor T. Finne - a lion figure with a shield, which depicts the coat of arms of Finland. This monument was destroyed under unexplained circumstances in 1940. At that time Vyborg was already one of the cities of the USSR, and it was decided to restore the monument to Peter. It was installed on a temporary basis. However, when the city was occupied by the Finnish troops in August 1941, bronze Peter was dismantled again.

There are archival photographs in which the dropped monument is viewed by Marshal Mannerheim, President of Finland R. Ryti and others. Since the head of the statue was cast separately, it fell off when it fell. According to some reports, the headless sculpture of 1942 was sent for storage to the Vyborg Castle. What happened to the head of the monument is known from the memoirs of the mayor of Vyborg at that time, Major of the Finnish army Arno Tuurn. He picked up the head and kept it on his desk in his study. The mayor's residence was on the current Podgornaya street in the Bishop's House. One day, during a reception, when Tuurn left for a few minutes, one of the visitors stole his head. Only after Tuurn threatened to take serious measures against her kidnappers was she returned. It was in the office of the mayor that the head of the sculpture was found by the soldiers of the Red Army, when the city was again taken by our troops in 1944.

During the Great Patriotic War, the bronze Peter was badly damaged. The sculpture was sent for restoration in Leningrad to the Monumentskulpura plant. The sculptor N. Volzhukhin supervised the work. The former pedestal was gone. A new pedestal made according to the project of A.A. Draghi, higher than the original.

In 1954, in August, the third opening of the monument to Peter I took place. Bronze Peter then left his pedestal again, but only to undergo another restoration.

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Topic: Monument to Peter I description and photo - Russia - Leningrad region: Vyborg.