In 2011, a monument was erected in St. Petersburg by Tom de Tomon. Seven years later it turned out that its author confused everything and portrayed a Scottish chemist

The monument to the architect Tom de Thomon was erected in 2011-in honor of the birthday of St. Petersburg

In 2010, the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, decided to celebrate the 307th birthday of St. Petersburg by creating a miniature copy of the city in the Alexander Park. In 2011, the sculptural group “Architects” was installed in the complex, depicting famous architects working on the buildings of St. Petersburg: Andrei Voronikhin, Vasily Bazhenov, Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Karl Rossi and others. Among them was the statue of Jean-France Tom de Thomon-he was responsible for the alteration of the Bolshoi Theater and the construction of the St. Petersburg exchange on the shooter of the Vasilievsky Island. The author of the "architects" was the sculptor Alexander Taratov .

In 2018, it turned out that a portrait of a chemist Thomas Thomson was used for sculpture. But the scientist has nothing to do with St. Petersburg

On August 8, 7 years after the installation of architects, art critic and specialist in Russian architecture of the XVIII century, Kirill Posternak drew attention to the fact that the face of the Scottish chemist Thomas Thomson was used for the sculpture of Tom de Tomon. It turned out that Taratynov, who worked on the figure, took the image of an architect from an article on Wikipedia, where he-probably because of similar surnames-confused with the scientist. Taratynov did not check the information - and therefore, instead of Tom de Thomon, he made a statue of Thomson, in which he recreated the appearance of a chemist up to a toad from his engraving from Wikipedia. Now the image is removed from an article about Tom de Thomon.

The author of the sculpture recognized the error and confirmed that he used data from the Internet. Now he offers to remove or change the monument

On August 15, in a conversation with the St. Petersburg edition of Fontanka.ru, Taratynov admitted the mistake: “We did not contact historians. We were sure that the Internet gives us the right information. On all tourist sites there is this unfortunate photograph of Thomson under the name of Tom de Thomon. ” The sculptor has already contacted Gazprom representatives, but there was no solution yet.

Taratynov himself is ready to remove the statue and replace it with another. He considers the opportunity to create a collective image for the architect, since the real volume of de Thomon "no one has seen." To correct the error, the intervention of the Committee on Urban Planning and Architecture may be required. However, the committee on confused monuments before the appeal of Fontanka.ru knew nothing. Representatives of the department said that they needed time to prepare, and promised later to report their decision.

Maxim Ivanov