05 / 17Artwork 5 of 17Virtual exhibition
The Shoed Golden Flea
Mykola Syadristy1959
A life-size golden flea with golden horseshoes on its feet: one of the best-known tales in Russian literature, brought to life. The Szentendre piece is a copy of one of the master's first, legendary works.
What to look for under the microscope
In numbers
- MaterialGold
- SizeLife-size; a real flea is 1.5–3.3 mm long
- One horseshoeAbout 50 microns, roughly the thickness of a fine hair
- The horseshoe nails3–4 microns in diameter
- 1959Year created
The story
In Nikolai Leskov's 1881 tale (Левша, “The Left-Hander”), the English present the Tsar with a wind-up dancing flea made of steel. In reply, the craftsmen of Tula shoe it. Each of them signs his own pieces – except the left-hander: he made the horseshoe nails, and they are too small to be signed.
How it was made
For the original, the hardest part was fixing the horseshoes to the brittle legs of the preserved flea: the slightest excess pressure would have broken them. Fitting the horseshoes required absolute stillness, so the master worked in the pauses between his heartbeats.
Did you know?
- Syadristy even wrote a book about this challenge, titled “Is It Difficult to Shoe a Flea?”.
- A real flea can jump up to 33 cm horizontally – 110 times its body length. Vertically it reaches 18 cm.
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