Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan

Repin began working on the painting in Moscow. A first overall sketch, with the character of the Tsar turned to his right, dates from 1882. The idea of the painting, according to Repin, is linked to his confrontation with the themes of violence, revenge and blood during the political events of 1881; additional sources of inspiration were the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the bullfights Repin had witnessed during a trip to Western Europe in 1883. Political violence On 13 March 1881 in Saint Petersburg, the reformist Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki, a member of the revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya. The bomb also seriously injured Hryniewiecki, who died a few hours later. Hryniewiecki's accomplices, the Pervomartovtsy, were executed on 13 April 1881. Repin, who visited Saint Petersburg in mid-February 1881 for the opening of the Wanderers' exhibition, was present when the tsar was killed. He returned there in April and attended the execution of the attack's perpetrators and their accomplices. Repin's friend, poet Vasily Kamensky, wrote in his memoirs Repin had told him "how he had witnessed the public execution of the Pervomartovtsy" (Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, Kibalchich, Mikhailov and Rysakov). "Ah, as it was nightmare times," – sighed Repin – "complex, appalling. I even remember each board on the breasts, with the inscription "regicide". I even remember Zhelyabov's gray pants, Perovskaya's black hat". For Repin, there was a link between the events of 1881 and the scene represented in Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 from exactly 300 years earlier, in which the Tsar is the murderer. The music of Antar bloody second movement inspired Repin the most; he said in his memoirs: Trip to Europe Repin's painting is also striking because of its representation of blood, which is seeping from the Tsarevich's temple and remains on the floor in a puddle after his father has picked him up. According to Repin's memoirs, he was influenced by his 1883 trip to Europe, where he witnessed bullfights: == Creation ==

According to Repin, the design and painting of the canvas were a lengthy process: The painting depicts one of the rooms of the from the 17th century while the accessories, throne, mirror, and kaftan were painted at the Kremlin Armoury. The chest is part of the collections of the Rumyantsev Museum. == Analysis ==

Moment represented Although the painting is sometimes called Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son, Repin did not paint the moment at which the Tsar hits the Tsarevich. The work does not represent violence but its resolution. he embraces him by the waist. Tsarevich Ivan, weeping, gently waves his hand. The two characters are crisscrossed with each other in the centre of the painting. They are depicted in a twilight The gesture with which Ivan the Terrible hugs and supports his son's waist is reminiscent of the paintings The Return of the Prodigal Son and David and Jonathan by Dutch painter Rembrandt, which Repin studied and admired since his formative years, and are housed in the Hermitage Museum. and that "the beauty, the touch or the virtuosity of the brush" was not the only important things because he had always pursued "the essential: the body, as a body". Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan is "painted with such a diversity of craftsmanship and with such a rich palette of dark chords" that it is, according to Russian painter and art critic Ivan Kramskoi, an "authentic orchestra". or "blood red", and "thick and saturated crimson red" predominates. Pierre Gonneau supports a converging position, stressing this sacrificial vision refers "to the symbolic roots of the monarchy because the sacrificed tsarevich finds himself in a position to embody the forces opposing the authority of the tsar". 1909 version In 1909, on a commission from the industrialist and collector , Repin painted a second version of Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, which he called Filicide (). It is on display at Voronezh Museum of Fine Arts. Répine Ivan le Terrible et son fils ivan deuxième version 1909.jpg|Filicide (1909).|alt=Another version of the table. Lighter colors. Répine Ivan le Terrible et son fils Ivan deuxième version 1909 (détail).jpg|Detail of Filicide.|alt=Detail of the painting. Color effects. == Reception and initial censorship ==

In 1885, Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan was shown for the first time to Repin's painter friends, among whom were Ivan Kramskoi, Ivan Shishkin, Nikolai Yaroshenko and Pavel Brullov. According to Repin, his hosts were stunned and silent for a long time, waiting to see what Kramskoi would say: The very conservative Attorney General of the Most Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev told Alexander III of his "repulsion" and perplexity about the painting, which did not please the Tsar and his entourage, and on 1 April 1885, viewings of the painting were forbidden. It was the first painting to be censored in the Russian Empire, and Pavel Tretyakov, who bought it, was told "not to expose it, and more generally not to allow it to be brought to the attention of the public by any other means". The ban was lifted on 11 July 1885 after the intervention of the painter Alexey Bogolyubov. == Vandalism and controversies ==

On 16 January 1913, Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 was slashed three times with a knife by a 29-year-old iconoclast, son of the furniture maker Abram Balachov. The curator of the Tretyakov gallery , learning of the vandalism of the canvas, threw himself under a train. The painting was restored almost to its original state with the help of Repin. In October 2013, a group of Orthodox historians and activists, led by Vassili Boiko-Veliki, an apologist and supporter of the canonization of Tsar Ivan, addressed the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky to ask him to remove the canvas from the Tretyakov Gallery on the grounds it offends the patriotic feelings of Russians. Following extensive restoration works, the painting was placed on display on 16 December 2024. == Legacy ==

Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan remains one of Russia's most famous paintings, and the most psychologically intense of Repin's works. The work appears briefly in the third episode of the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl. == Subject of the painting and historiography ==

The Tsarevich Ivan's death had grave consequences for Russia, since it left no competent heir to the throne. After the Tsar's death in 1584, his unprepared son Feodor I succeeded him with Boris Godunov as de facto ruler. After Feodor's death, Russia entered a period of political uncertainty, famine and war known as the Time of Troubles. The details of the Tsarevich's death are unknown and controversial. The Tsarevich died in 1581 in the Alexandrov Kremlin, the residence of Tsar Ivan the Terrible from 1564 to 1581, and the centre of his oprichnina and de facto capital of the Tsardom of Russia. In contemporary Russian chronicles and sources In a letter addressed to Nikita Zakharin and Andrey Shchelkalov in 1581, Ivan the Terrible wrote; "[he] cannot go to Moscow because of [his] son's illness" without identifying the illness. Several contemporary Russian chronicles mention the Tsarevich's death without providing any details. According to the Piskarevsk Chronicle, the death occurred at midnight. None of these chronicles suggest the death of Ivan Ivanovich was violent. Other sources provide a more-detailed version of the death, saying the Tsarevich was mortally wounded by his father during an argument. One of these sources, the , reports the following: The sources indicate the event took place on 14 November 1581 and that the Tsarevich would have died on 19 November, but the dates reported vary. The diary of the dyak (clerk) says; "some say (of the Tsarevich) that his life was extinguished because of blows by the hands of his father, after trying to prevent him from committing an ugly act". Foreign testimonies Contemporaneous foreign sources are more eloquent; Jacques Margeret, a French mercenary captain in service in Russia, wrote; "there is a rumour that he (the tsar) killed the eldest (son) with his own hand, which wasn't the case, because, although he struck him with the end of the rod and he was wounded by a blow, he did not die from this, but some time later, on a pilgrimage journey". Another version is reported by the papal diplomat Antonio Possevino. According to him, in November 1581 in the Alexandrov Kremlin, Ivan the Terrible found his daughter-in-law Helen lying on a bench in undergarments. {{blockquote|text=The third wife of Ivan's son was laying on a bench, dressed in underwear. She was pregnant and didn't expect anyone to visit her. However, the Grand Prince of Moscow (Ivan the Terrible) paid her an unexpected visit. She immediately stood up to meet him, but it was already impossible to calm him down. He hit her in the face, and then beat her with his staff, punching her so hard that she lost her child the next night. His son Ivan then ran to his father and asked him not to beat his wife, but this only made his father angrier. The Prince started hitting his son with his staff, which resulted in a very serious wound in the head. Before that, in anger at his father, the son hotly reproached him in the following words: "You imprisoned my first wife in a convent for no reason, you did the same with my second wife, and now you are beating up the third in order to kill the child she carries in her womb." Having injured his son, the father immediately indulged in deep grief and immediately summoned doctors and Andrei Shchelkalov and Nikita Romanovich from Moscow to have everything at hand. On the fifth day, the son died and was transferred to Moscow. Stories by Russian historians 18th-century Russian historian Nikolay Karamzin also believed the Tsarevich died because of his father but under different circumstances. {{blockquote Repin relied on Karamzin's story to paint Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581, one of the most-striking paintings of his chrestomathy. Russian imperial historian Mikhail Shcherbatov, who studied the different versions of Ivan Ivanovich's death, considers Possevino's version the most plausible and the Russian imperial historian Vasily Klyuchevsky called it the only reliable version. == Notes and references ==

Explanatory notes Citations General and cited references • • == External links ==