The sculptural composition "Two Angels" is located on the central alley of the main city cemetery of Sumy, near the Peter and Paul Church, near which the family burial vault of the Kharitonenko dynasty is located. The monument by the talented French sculptor Aristide Croisy is made of white Italian marble and depicts an angel with outstretched wings carrying a dead girl to heaven in her arms. The sculpture is on a pedestal depicting two angelic faces.
The monument was erected in 1891 on the grave of Zinaida, the granddaughter of the Sumy sugar factory and philanthropist Ivan Kharitonenko, who passed away at the age of eight, after an illness caused by diphtheria, a dangerous infectious disease in those days. Such an artistic decision of the tombstone and its name “Two Angels” are explained by the fact that at such an early age the human soul is still pure and sinless, like an angel.
Having received from the girl's parents, a few months after her death in 1889, an order for the manufacture of a sculptural group, Croisy first made her full-size plaster model. Zinaida's face on Croisy's monument was made from her photograph sent to the sculptor in France. Before being sent to Sumy, the marble sculpture was exhibited at the prestigious art salon in Paris in 1891.
Since Croisy was a Catholic, he mistakenly depicted the Orthodox Zinaida with her arms folded on her chest, but the left hand lies on top of the right, and not vice versa. Next to the sculpture "Two Angels" is the sculpture "Golgotha", also made by A. Croisy for the gravestone of Ivan Kharitonenko.