Alexandre Benois (1870 - 1960)

448

Aleksandr Pushkin

Медный всадник

The bronze horseman

Mir Iskusstva No. 11, 1904

310 x 25 mm. 34 pages

The illustrations for this epic poem by P were designed for and published in the journal Mir Iskusstva [World of art] in 1904. Pushkin tells his story against the background of a heavy flooding of St. Petersburg in November 1824. The beautiful city with its bronze horseman, the statue of Peter the Great, given to the city by his successor Catharine the Great, is not free from calamity. Even as the statue comes alive, the life of the fiancée of the key figure of the tale cannot be saved. Benois designed his images as a hymn to the city and its builder. The smallness of the people fighting the floods is contrasted with the grandeur of the architecture and, above all, the great bronze horseman. This work is often considered the best of Benois’ illustrational work. Benois kept working on these illustrations until 1916. The German 1922 edition has therefore more illustrations than this original set, published in the first issue of the Journal in 1904. Its publication in Mir Iskusstva was executed with the utmost care for quality of design and print. The love for the Russian culture of the bygone centuries, displayed in the journal, was a sign of the re-awakening of a national Russian identity, not only of Petrine Russia but of ancient Russia also.

References:

Etkin 1965, pp. 49-51

Sidorov 1967, no. 6

Sidorov 1969, p. 65

Gusarova 1972 pp. 23-25

Sokolova1972, no.108

German 1985, nol. 121

Fekula 1988, no. 5097

Kamensky 1991. pp. 149-150

Munich 1993, pp. 54-55

Paris 1999, p. 48

Petergof 2001, no. 69