Monuments reveal

Jesus Christ the King monument in Poland – the world’s largest statue of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ the King monument is the world’s largest statue of Jesus Christ, established in the south-eastern outskirts of the city of Swiebodzin in Poland. The official opening and consecration took place on 21 November 2010. The total height of the monument about 52 m, which is higher than the monument of Cristo de la Concordia in Cochabamba (40.44 m with the pedestal) and the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro (39.6 m with the pedestal). The height of the statue with a crown is 36 m, and 16 m – height of stone-earthen hill. The height of the two other statues without pedestals of 34.2 m and 30 m. Thus, the statue of Christ is the highest in the world. The maximum width of the statue is about 25 m. The initiator of the construction of the monument was Canon Sylvester Zawadzki, the priest of the Temple of the Divine Mercy in Swiebodzin.
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Beautiful Italian sculptor Gina Lollobrigida

Beautiful Italian sculptor Gina Lollobrigida
The famous Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, even in the era of her triumphant success in the movie was passionately fond of drawing and sculpture. In her youth, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, but later the talent and beauty have led her to a new way of expression – the cinema. Having achieved great success in the cinema, she finished her film career in the 1990s, and returned to her first love – sculpture.
In her art gallery – dozens of sculptures, life-size in bronze and clay … Meanwhile, the cinema has become a source of inspiration for her sculptural works. Thus, the sculpture is a magical golden mirror of Gina, in which come alive beautiful heroines played by Lollobrigida in the movie: Esmeralda, the Queen of Sheba, and Paolina Borghese …
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Altai Mountain Carved Icon

Altai Mountain Carved Icon of Virgin with a Child was made by a nun of Barnaul Znamensky Monastery Felofeya. The rock carved icon is next to St. John the Theologian monastery of Chemal region, on the Patmos island of Altai Republic, Russia. Once, in one of the rocks of the abbess of the female monastery nun Nadezhda saw the image of the Virgin, which later was carved by nun of Barnaul Znamensky monastery – sculptor Felofeya. Currently, St. John the Evangelist church on the island of Patmos is the current women’s hermitage, where services are held regularly. It is opened to all comers.
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Pilgrims family sculptural composition

Pilgrims family sculptural composition – a man with a knapsack, a woman, and a child – made in the style of street sculptures – you can go to it to get close up, take a picture. Behind pilgrims rises symbolic image of Ivan the Great Bell in the Kremlin, in front of them – the bell tower of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. The composition is crowned by the figure of an angel. The frame group includes Bell, and among them – real ones, you can come and ring. The main connecting link of the composition is the Gates that open to every man on the path to God and shaped domes of an Orthodox church, topped with a figure of the Archangel Michael. In the center of the composition – the family of the Moscow city dweller, beginning the pilgrimage route from Moscow.
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Russian traditional ship sculpture

Russian traditional ship sculpture

The tradition to decorate ships with sculpture goes back to hoary antiquity. Militant sailors, seeking to crush the morale of the enemy even before the battle, attached to the stem heads of ferocious monsters, and unseen dragons. They were so frightening that, upon return to their harbor, not wanting to frighten the relatives, sailors covered the sculptures with deflated sail. Ship noses were decorated with carved wooden figures of animals, birds, and each had a certain meaning. For example, standing on back paws lion symbolized courage, grandeur and generosity. And preparing to jump leopard meant courage. A rapidly running horse symbolized power and speed; bull – fertility and prosperity; wing-spread Eagle – power and insight; bantam-cock – readiness for battle; and fish – vigilance. Brightly painted and even covered with gold leaf, flying over the waves figures were pride of ship. And only most experienced sailors could care for them. Their daily duty included daily cleaning them from sea salt, washing, and tinting. Besides, captured in the ship fights sculptures considered a valuable trophy. In honor of the victory, these sculptures, attached to a specially built triumphal column, dubbed the rostral (from the Latin word rostrum – the nose of the ship).
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Perm Gods Wooden Sculpture. John the Evangelist. Detail of ‘Crucifixion’. The village of Ust-Kachka. Wood, gesso, tempera. XVIII century

Perm Gods Wooden Sculpture
Komi-Permian treated sculptures with a touching love and awe. They dressed their wooden gods as living – in clothes and wooden shoes, brought them treats and gifts. Permians believed that the wooden gods came to life at night and went to the temple, so they regularly changed shoes of their gods. A rich selection of “Perm Gods” has been collected by Nikolay Serebrennikov. In the 1920s he organized several expeditions to the old villages in the north of the Perm Region for the collection of unique sculptures. Expeditions were not simple. Serebrennikov recalled, “For all the trips I had to travel 5083 miles, of which 2059 kilometers by horses, 2105 by steamer and 919 miles by rail.” Total 195 sculptures have been collected in six expeditions! And that’s not counting the various vintage items.
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Monument to laboratory mice in Novosibirsk, Russia. Sculptor Alexey Agrikolyansky

The Monument to laboratory mice for their services to science was installed in the square not far from the local Academic Institute of Cytology and Genetics of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The bronze monument shows a mouse in a lab coat and glasses, knitting with needles the DNA double helix. The monument was opened on July 1, 2013, to the 120th anniversary of Novosibirsk. According to the Institute Director, Academician Nikolai Kolchanov, a monument symbolizes the gratitude of the humanity for the animal, for the use of mice to study the genes of animals, molecular and physical mechanisms of diseases, development of new drugs. Sculptor Alexey Agrikolyansky, who embodied the idea into life, admitted that to do this was not easy, because the mouse is not a human, and it was necessary create it with emotion, character, find a cross between a cartoon character and a real mouse, and keep anatomical parameters of it.
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