The main façade of the New Hermitage is splendidly adorned by a portico incorporating ten magnificent atlantes carved from Serdobol granite by the sculptor Alexander Terebenev and a team of 150 assistants. One of those involved in this titanic labour recalled that each craftsman was given his own specialist task: some worked on the base, others on the arms, the body, the legs. Terebenev himself put the finishing touches to the face of each of the figures.
In 1840 Leo von Klenze presented two designs for the portico - one with caryatids, the other with atlantes. Proceeding from the approved version, the sculptor Johann von Halbig created in Munich a small model of an atlas in the form of an Egyptian pharaoh. It was sent to St Petersburg, but here in 1846 Terebenev had already produced a full-sized model from his own sketches. Terebenev's creative input was fundamental to this work. He was responsible for the entire plastic design of the statues and the artistry with which strength and tension are conveyed. The architect himself rated the sculptor's work very highly. "The beauty and noble style of these sculptures," he wrote, "the purity and delicacy of the work and the gleam of the polish leave nothing to be desired and make it possible to declare that if the Egyptian pharaohs produced their monolithic colossi, these Telamons for the Far North are in no way inferior." The massive figures had all been installed in the portico by 1 September 1848.