Vladimir Lenin, a Russian revolutionary and politician, was known to favour monuments as an instrument of propaganda. Having won the revolution, the Council of People's Commissars decreed to install monuments to the great people of the past - Spartacus, Brutus, Razin, Khalturin - onto the squares and parks of Russian cities. Yet out of 50 names in the Lenin's list, there was only one woman - Sophia Perovskaya.
A bit indignant at this gender inequality and intolerance, workers of the Kusinsky Machine-Building Plant presented a small figurine of Jeanne d'Arc, or as it is better known in English, Joan of Arc, to the head of Soviet Russia. The artwork was initially designed by either Jean Baptiste-Morot or Joseph Berthaud, and its image clicked with the idea of 'artistic revolutionism'. As explained by Anatoly Lunacharsky, People's Commissar for Education: "The difficulty of implementing this idea results from the fact that its realisation shall not be speeded up at the cost of artistry, for the state, as it is now, cannot and must not be the initiator of bad taste."
The national heroine of France could have been placed somewhere on Red Square or in Petrograd, where the Alexander Column is. It did not happen, though. Lenin died, and instead of using his list of names, monuments were being raised now to him. The history has nonetheless rewarded masters of iron casting. Their works cost as high as if they were golden; they are worshipped by collectors from all over the world.
The best adjective to describe such sculptures is 'open-work'. They seem so light, yet they are not made of steel but of cast iron. The latter is a crude product coming out of blast furnaces, with no extra additives, and characterised by extreme fragility.
The figurine of the Catholic saint - a copy of the one presented to Lenin - was cast in 1959 and gifted to St. Petersburg Mining Museum by the management of the Zlatoustovsky Metallurgic Plant in gratitude for assistance in establishing its museum.
