History and Culture: “Works by Peter Сlodt. Restoration Completed” exhibition opened in the State Hermitage Museum

On February 22, 2020, “Works by Peter Сlodt. Restoration Completed” exhibition was launched in the Recess of the Eastern Gallery in the Winter Palace (the State Hermitage Museum, Saint-Petersburg). It features just eight exhibits, among which are unique examples of cabinet sculpture created by an outstanding sculptor Peter Clodt. The central items are two of the master's early works – tinted plaster figures of horses that were made to a commission from Emperor Nicholas I and were presented in the exhibition after restoration.

Peter (Piotr Karlovich) Clodt von Jürgensburg (1805–1867) was one of the founders of the animal genre in Russian sculpture, the foremost exponent of monumental animal sculpture in Russia in the first half of the XIX century, an Academician and Honoured Professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

The restoration of the exhibition’s works took five years to complete and was finished in 2018 by the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Sculpture and Semiprecious Stone. Long and complicated work to glue together and reinforce the pieces of the sculptures and to make good the losses gave the statuettes back their structural integrity and suitability for display.