Jean-François Thomas de Thomon

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Saint Petersburg Exchange

Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (12 April [

Odessa Theatre, destroyed by fire in 1873. Thomas de Thomon, graduate of the French Academy in Rome, "imported" the high classicism practiced by this school in 1780s into Russia and thus contributed to the formation of Russian national variant of neoclassicism practiced during the reign of Alexander I.[1]

Biography

Jean-François Thomas was born in a

Pierre François Léonard Fontaine.[3] All his attempts to win a state scholarship for a study tour of Italy failed, and in 1785 he left for Rome on his own account, and attended the classes of the French Academy in Rome as a stowaway along with legitimate students.[3] His squatting in Rome continued for years; Thomas risked being expelled from the Academy had it not been for the patronage of François-Guillaume Ménageot.[3]

Thomas returned to France in 1789 and was hired by

Ancien Régime" in revolutionary France.[5]

His first tangible work of the period, rebuilding the gallery of

House of Esterházy in Vienna; at least two of his building, a school in Vienna and a bathhouse in Eisenstadt, survived to date in Austria.[6]

Earlier, most likely in 1792, he met with

Russian ambassador to Vienna, prince Dmitry Golitsyn; in 1798 Thomas de Thomon accepted invitation from his brother Alexander, then living in Moscow. Russian Empire at that time was closed to all Frenchmen in fear of revolutionary ideas. Thomas de Thomon sneaked into the country through Hamburg and Riga, assuming a persona of a Swiss citizen, native of Bern.[7]

Monument in Poltava

Thomas de Thomon initially worked for the Golytsins in their country residences and later relocated to

Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre.[7]
The project that started as a modest refit soon expanded into a full-scale rebuild to Thomon's own draft. It was structurally completed in one year; Thomas de Thomon remained its architect until the fire of 1 January 1811.

In 1804 Thomas de Thomon applied to an architectural contest to design naval warehouses on Matisov Island in Saint Petersburg; the resulting contract, completed in 1807, was split among three competing architects:

facades were built to Thomas de Thomon's design while floorplans and construction management were handled by his rivals.[8] The buildings were demolished in 1914, Lev Rudnev reused their stone blocks for a monument on the Field of Mars.[8]

In 1807–1809 Thomas de Thomon supervised construction of the monument to

Kazan Cathedral Square).[11]

His best known work,

Neva River, from the Winter Palace to the Peter and Paul Fortress.[13]

Thomon died in 1813 after an accidental fall from the scaffolding of the Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre, then being restored after a fire.

Critical assessment

Rastrelli. Russia has seen greater architects before and after him. But he was a Prometheus, who, having stolen the flame of new beauty from the gods in France, brought it to Russia."[16]

In culture

In June 2011, Russian artist Alexander Taratynov installed a life-size statue of Thomas de Thomon in Saint Petersburg. The statue is part of The Architects, a bronze sculptural group depicting the great architects of Russian Empire as commissioned by Gazprom and installed in Alexander Park. In 2018, Taratynov admitted he used a picture he found on Wikipedia to base the statue on, and that it was actually an image of the Scottish chemist Thomas Thomson – Taratynov blamed Wikipedia for the error but also himself for not checking with a historian to verify it was accurate.[17][18]

References and notes

  1. ^ Shvidkovsky, p. 297
  2. ^ Shuisky 2008, p. 213
  3. ^ a b c Shuisky 2008, p. 214
  4. ^ a b Shuisky, p. 215
  5. ^ a b Shvidkovsky 2007, p. 296
  6. ^ Shuisky, p. 216
  7. ^ a b Shuisky, p. 217
  8. ^ a b Shuisky, p. 218
  9. ^ Shuisky, p. 219
  10. ^ a b Shuisky, p. 220
  11. ^ Shuisky, p. 221
  12. ^ Shvidkovsky 2007, pp. 295–296
  13. ^ Shuisky, p. 223–224
  14. ^ Schmidt 1989, p. 196
  15. ^ Russian: "Всё ещё не утратил священного дара безумствовать во имя красоты" – quote in Lisovsky, p. 56
  16. ^ Igor Grabar, translation as in: Schmidt 1989, p. 56
  17. ^ Jack Aitchison (20 August 2018). "Wikipedia gaffe sees statue to Glasgow professor erected in RUSSIA". Daily Record. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  18. ^ Ilya Kazakov (August 16, 2018). "Как Алексей Миллер подарил Петербургу вместо русского зодчего шотландского химика из Википедии" [As Alexey Miller presented to St. Petersburg instead of Russian architect Scottish chemist from Wikipedia]. Fontanka (in Russian). Archived from the original on August 20, 2018. Retrieved August 19, 2018. The architect acknowledged the error and dumped the blame on Wikipedia, from which he downloaded the photo.

Sources

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