a bronze bust of emperor peter the great, late 19th century

bust of the emperor crowned with a laurel wreath, wearing a loosely knotted toga over classical-style armor, the bust on a red marble plinth mounted with an ormolu band above a square base, inscribed M. Collot on the right shoulder 

The bust and pedestal slightly loose from the square base, minor surface dirt and verdigris. Very minor marks to the marble. In otherwise good condition.
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This bust is based on St. Petersburg's renowned monument to Peter the Great, immortalized by Pushkin in his epic poem, The Bronze Horseman.  It is not well known that Marie-Anne Collot (1748-1821), a student of Étienne-Maurice Falconet, sculpted the head of the emperor for the final composition. Falconet had been commissioned by Catherine the Great to design a colossal monument dedicated to the founder of St. Petersburg, but the artist, long employed as the director of the sculpture atelier at the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, had trouble working on a large scale and several of his early designs were rejected.  At Catherine's own suggestion, Falconet passed the project to his student, Collot, whose works had already found favor with the empress.  This sculpture is almost identical to a version of Collot's bust reproduced at the St. Petersburg bronze foundry of Félix Chopin in 1860 and now housed in the State Russian Museum.  See L.P. Shaposhnikova, Skulptura XVIII-nachalo XX veka, Leningrad, 1988, p. 82 and Irina G. Etoeva, "'Brilliant Proof of the Creative Abilities of Women': Marie-Anne Collot in Russia," in An Imperial Collection: Women Artists from the State Hermitage Museum, London and Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 76-85.