Russian sculptor. Born in the city of Vilna, Antokolski chose the career of sculpture against the wishes of his orthodox parents. After studying in St. Petersburg and Berlin, he moved to Paris. His statue of Ivan the Terrible made him famous at the age of 28. He made life-size statues of such thinkers as Socrates and Spinoza, as well as fine portrait busts (among his sitters was the aged novelist Count Leo Tolstoy). Well known is his Christ Before Pilate: with bowed head and bare feet, Jesus, a Jewish peasant, stands before his unseen judge. For his earliest work, The Jewish Tailor, made in high-relief, he received a silver medal. It shows a lean old craftsman in cap and gabardine, sitting cross-legged in the window of his tiny shop, holding his needle against the light to thread it.