Inaugurated in 1991, the bronze statue of Peter I is the work of Mikhail Shemiakin, an artist who emigrated to the United States in 1971. Deliberately grotesque, it goes against the usual representations, showing the tsar looking weary of bearing the burden of his reforms. The disproportionate body adds to the controversy triggered by the piece, in which the figure's enormous hands and feet stand in contrast to his small head, inspired by the death mask of Peter I created by Bartolomeo Rastrelli (exhibited in the Hermitage).