Last year, when I passed these horses in St. Petersburg, I noticed one detail and asked you a question - do you know whose skin is on the horse? Then we found out everything with success. But Peter is not only a beautiful city with a rich history, it is also full of mysteries.
Another of the riddles about the same horses and immediately my own version of the solution, I recently heard. Check yourself, did you know about it?
Who does not know this famous bridge with 4 beautiful horses. But you might not have noticed one peculiarity of them. Quite small at first glance, but having learned about it, you will now always look closely at this detail.
Ordinary horse legs huh? Not really! Please note that there are no horseshoes on the hooves.
These two stallions are located on the same bank of the river. Fontanka and run in one direction. But the other two are in the opposite direction, let's look at their hooves …
Promotional video:
Oops! These already have horseshoes. Why is that? What are your versions? In the meantime, we are looking at the map:
Foundry workshops and forges were located on Liteiny Prospect. Therefore, those horses that run from Liteiny have already acquired horseshoes, and those that only go there without them.
But there really isn't much to say about this explaining the horseshoe situation. This is how Klodt's son Mikhail wrote about the work on the sculptures:
“In Pavlovsk, my father started a horse Serko. Serko, an old veteran of the court stable, completely white, chilled his father with a model when he sculpted anichkov horses. In Pavlovsk, Serko became a “member” of our family. Father often drove us children on it along the paths of the garden. We climbed with a quiet horse under the belly …
Another horse, Amalatbek, was also a model for anichkov horses, it was a white Arabian, obedient and beautifully, impeccably built. Her father trained her: she, by his order, reared up and took all sorts of poses. My sister, a twelve-year-old girl, rode Amalatbek in an Amazon, and, at the behest of my father, the horse and the rider famously reared up."
The sketches for the last two groups were completed in 1848. Two more years later, Klodt's plan was completed. As conceived by the sculptor, while on the Anichkov Bridge, one cannot see all four figures. They need to be considered gradually, one by one. The plot of Klodt will be revealed most fully if we begin to review the ensemble from the west, from the first group, depicting a tamer with a cord in his hands. Then you need to cross Nevsky Prospect, then across the bridge to its eastern side. The second sculpture conveys the intensified dynamics of the struggle. A man is defeated by a horse, which almost broke free. In the third group, the drama gradually subsides, and the fourth shows the tamer calmly walking next to the horse, whose back is covered with the skin of a leopard. The process of taming the horse is symbolized, among other things, by the fact that the horses of the third and fourth groups, unlike the first, are shod.
That's it. Did you know about this.