A favourite sculptor of Nicholas I of Russia.

So here we have the Russian ruble, nominal - 2. The year of issue of this coin is 2005, Mint: Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Total circulation – 10.000. The coin is dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Peter Klodt.

Peter Jakob Freiherr Clodt von Jürgensburg, was born in 5 June 1805, Saint Petersburg. Academician and Honored Professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts.  Actual state councilor.

Klodt started his career as a professional artillery officer and amateur sculptor. He attended classes at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, where his mastery in depicting horses eventually won him the rank of academician and the praise of the Emperor. As legend has it, Nicholas I remarked of Klodt that he "creates horses finer than any prize stallion does".

Klodt's most famous group of equestrian statues, the Horse Tamers, was installed at the Anichkov Bridge in 1851. He also produced the bronze statue of Ivan Krylov in the Summer Garden in 1848 – 55. It was the first monument to a poet erected in the Russian Empire.

Klodt collaborated with Vasily Demut-Malinovsky on the statue of Saint Vladimir in Kiev, installed in 1853, and the statuary for the Narva Triumphal Gate. He also sculpted a quadriga above the portico of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

Klodt's last significant work was a posthumous tribute to his patron, a horse statue for the equestrian Monument to Nicholas I on Saint Isaac's Square. Installed in 1856 – 1859, it was the first equestrian statue in the world with only two support-points.