By the summer of 1769, Falconet’s work on the statue was sufficiently advanced to allow the public to see the model. Not every reaction was favorable. One point of contention was the presence of the serpent the sculptor had placed beneath the horse’s rear hooves. Falconet was told that the creature was inappropriate and should be removed by people who did not realize that the support given by attachment to the serpent was essential. Without the three points made up by the hooves and tail resting on the serpent’s back, the horse would not stand. “They have not made, as I have, the calculation of forces which I need,” the sculptor declared of his critics. “They do not know that if their advice were followed, the work would not survive at all.” Catherine had no intention of getting involved in the controversy and replied to Falconet, “There is an old song which says ‘what will be, will be.’ That is my response to the serpent. Your reasons are good.”
By the spring of 1770, the model was complete, and there were more complaints. Falconet was said to have represented the Russian hero dressed as a Roman emperor, provoking leaders of the Orthodox Church to complain that this Frenchman had made Peter resemble a pagan monarch. Catherine calmed these critics by declaring that Peter was wearing an idealized representation of Russian costume. Later, Catherine wrote again to reassure her sensitive artist: “I hear only praise of the statue. I have heard from only one person a comment which was that she wished the clothing was more pleated, so that stupid people would not think it was a chemise, but you can’t please everybody.” Finally when the completed clay version was unveiled, Catherine still had to reassure the nervous Falconet, who now was worrying that there seemed to be no reaction to his work; people weren’t speaking to him, he complained. Again, Catherine tried to reassure him. “I know that … in general everyone is very happy,” she told him. “If people don’t say anything to you, it is out of delicacy. Some feel they aren’t qualified enough; others are perhaps afraid of displeasing you by telling you their opinion; still more can’t see a thing. Don’t take everything the wrong way.”
While the colossal statue was being molded, the sculptor and his patron were trying to find a base on which to mount the work. Prospectors searching in nearby Finnish Karelia for granite for the new Neva quays had discovered an enormous, monolithic rock, deeply embedded in marsh. When unearthed, it was twenty-two feet high, forty-two feet long, and thirty-four feet wide. Its weight, experts calculated, was fifteen hundred tons. Catherine decided that this Ice Age boulder must serve as the pedestal for her statue. To bring it to St. Petersburg, a system was worked out that in itself was an engineering feat. Once winter came and the ground was frozen, the boulder was dragged four miles to the sea. It was cradled in a metallic sledge, which rolled over copper balls serving the function of modern ball bearings; the balls rolled in tracks hollowed out in logs laid end to end. It took capstans, pulleys, and a thousand men to inch the stone along, a hundred yards a day, from the forest clearing to the coast of the Gulf of Finland. There, a specially constructed barge was waiting; once it was loaded, the barge was supported on each side by a large warship to prevent its capsizing. In this fashion, the boulder moved slowly across the gulf and was towed up the Neva River, to be brought ashore, maneuvered into position, and deposited at its final site on the riverbank.
By this time, five years had gone by. Another four years were spent finding the right casting master and constructing a mold to cast the immense mass of copper and tin into the form of the statue. Horse and rider together would weigh sixteen tons, with the thickness of the bronze varying from one inch to a quarter of an inch. At one point in the casting, the mold broke, pouring out molten bronze. Fires started and were extinguished, and then the melted, hardened metal had to be pried and scraped up, remelted and recast. Failure followed failure and money drained away. Falconet’s relations with Catherine frayed. What had been enthusiasm and encouragement on her part turned to indifference and irritation. Falconet, nervous and irascible, was unable to stand up to the empress, who could not understand the constant delays. At first, he had pleased her with his artistic temperament; eventually she wearied of it. Writing to Grimm and commissioning him to hire two Italian architects, she expressed her frustration: “You will choose honest and reasonable people, not dreamers like Falconet; [I want] people who walk on the earth, not in the air.”
