Civic leaders in St Petersburg intended to pay tribute to Jean-francois Thomas de Thomon, a French architect who designed a number of the city’s neo-classical buildings in the 18th and 19th centuries, The Herald has reported.

However, in searching the internet for images of the designer, it has emerged that sculptors had confused him with Thomas Thomson, a Perthshire-born scientist who was regius professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow from 1818 to 1852.

The error has been spotted seven years after the installation of the artwork in St Petersburg’s Alexander Park that depicts eight famous architects around a table.

Alexander Taratynov, the project’s chief sculptor, has admitted he used an engraving purporting to be De Thomon from a Wikipedia page, which other sites, including the St Petersburg tourism site, corroborated. The image, however, was of Thomson.

Mr Taratynov said: “I was the project’s main artist and am responsible for everything. Information for the work was taken from internet resources. However, as our diligent people who are interested in history have rightly noticed, there has obviously been a mistake.

“I, as the author, am ready to take away the figure and exchange it for another one. Since nobody has seen Thomas de Thomon, then an invented, composite image could be created, which is also often done.”

The error is thought to have been spotted by a worker at Russia’s Museum of Architecture, who wrote a blog post about it this month.

Image By GAlexandrova - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68607649