Sculptor and medallion maker, painter, representative of the Russian art school of the beginning and middle of the 19th century, Count - by birth, privy councilor - on the state rank, uncle of the poet Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy and a cousin uncle of writer Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.
Born in Petersburg, he was one of thirteen children in the family of a diplomat and impoverished Intendant General of the Imperial Army. In 1800 he graduated from the Marine Cadet Corps with the rank of michman (ensign). At the same time as studying in this elite establishment, he was a free listener of the Imperial Academy of Arts of Petersburg in the class of sculpture portrait and medal making of the best master of the Classicism bas-relief Ivan Prokofiev. After graduation he left the army service, preferring a brilliant military career, plastic arts and painting. At the age of twenty-six he was elected an Honorary Academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and was soon appointed by the highest order to the rank of manufacturer in the specially erected Special Medal Corps of the Mint, designed to produce various government awards, medals and orders, metal insignia and tokens, special stamps.
“Rodomisl of the 9th and 10th centuries” is the main obverse-medallion to the series “Patriotic War 1812,” which the sculptor had planned during the war days and two years later submitted to the Academy of Sciences, along with the project of nineteen reversals to it, and it took more than twenty years to translate them into medallions. The single face for the different turnovers of all medals of this series presents a perfectly balanced composition in tondo with an allegorical profile portrait of Alexander I in the guise of the ancient Slavic god of war Rodomisl. In a hard battle, the beautiful Greek gods and heroes, the naked warriors and athletes symbolize Napoleon’s dying army and the triumphant victory of the Sixth Coalition. F. Tolstoy sought that “anyone, looking at the ready medal, could find out, without seeing the signature, for what case it was created.”
The sculptor’s copy from the collection of the Museum of Russian Art, like others, made of putty, plaster, porcelain, opaque mass, is installed in a typical octagonal glass frame with a silver mordant and diamond handling, specially designed for this purpose by cutters and masters of the Imperial glass factory. Such attention to the copies from simple folk materials testifies to the huge popularity of medals in honor of the heroes of the nation, created by another of its hero, who has declared: “I am Russian and proud of this name.”
Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy at the Museum of Russian Art (prof. A. Abrahamyan’s collection):
Medallion “Rodomisl of the XΙX century”
Rodomisl of the XΙX century, 1813 – 1814