Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan

Creation

According to Repin, the design and painting of the canvas were a lengthy process:

I painted in tears, I was tortured, I tormented myself, I corrected again and again what I had painted, I hid it, in a sickly disappointment, no longer believing in my strength, I erased what I had painted. I had already erased, and I was attacking the canvas again. Every minute was terrible to me. I was disappointed with this painting, I hid it. And it made the same impression on my friends. But something pushed me towards it, and again I was working on it.

The painting depicts one of the rooms of the Chambers of the Romanov Boyars 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.

Most of Repin's work involved the choice of models; he sought the faces he needed from acquaintances and passers-by. The models for Ivan the Terrible were the painter Grigoriy Myasoyedov and the composer Pavel Blaramberg, while the landscape painter Vladimir Menk and writer Vsevolod Garshin modelled for Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. When he was asked about choosing Garshin, Repin replied:

There is a predestination in Garshin's face that struck me. He has the face of a man irreparably condemned to perish. This is what was needed for my Tsarevich.

According to Polish-American art historian Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, the incorporation of Garshin's face completes and allows her to be fully satisfied with the painting.

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. Ivan the Terrible holds his son. His eyes "bulging with horror, despair and madness", he embraces him by the waist. Tsarevich Ivan, weeping, gently waves his hand.

Two modifications to the preliminary sketches show the distance established by the painter with the altercation; the sceptre with which the Tsar strikes his son's temple is in his hand in the first sketches while in the final painting, it is on the floor in front of them. The bloodstain where the Tsarevich's head rests on the floor, which is very visible in the oil sketch Repin made in 1883, and which he kept and resumed later, is erased in the shadows of the final painting. Ivan Ivanovich's dress no longer has a long bloodstain. The represented moment becomes one of remorse, forgiveness and love. The painting also shows, in its centre, the reality and the irreversibility of the tsar's act: the blood flows from his son's temple and the attempt Ivan the Terrible makes to contain it with his left hand is hopeless.

Description and composition

The painting's 199.5 cm × 254 cm (6 ft 7 in × 8 ft 4 in) canvas is one of Repin's largest works; its dimensions are comparable to those of the Barge Haulers on the Volga and the Religious Procession in Kursk Governorate.

The two characters are crisscrossed with each other in the centre of the painting. They are depicted in a twilight and stand out from both the foreground of the canvas and the darker background. 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.

The construction of the painting is based on objects and pieces of furniture that are distributed around the characters: the crumpled red carpets on the floor, the Tsarevich's boots, the sceptre, the throne that was overturned during the argument, one of the ornamental balls that sparkles at the level of the son's eyes, and his cushion. Behind the figures, other pieces of furniture, such as the stove, the mirror of the Armor Museum and the chest of the Rumyantsev Palace, are less discernible. The back wall of the room is partly covered with a red-and-black diamond pattern. At the top left is a narrow bay.

Colours and material

Repin wrote he refused "the acrobatics of the brush and painting for the sake of painting" 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". An "intense red" or "blood red", and "thick and saturated crimson red" predominates. It is painted with pure colour, with no additions, and then reworked by the painter with an extraordinary diversity of shades.

The scarlet red of the blood flowing from the wound on the Tsarevich's temple stands out, as do the reflections on the folds of his kaftan, and finally the dark-red puddle of blood on the red carpet, and this tension of colours resonates with the tragedy depicted on the canvas. In the centre, the magnificence of the Tsarevich's kaftan contrasts with the darkness of Ivan the Terrible's black coat. Repin breaks this combination of blood red, pink and dark-brown tones with the complementary tones of the green of the Tsarevich's boots and the deep-blue of his velvet trousers. White light, "cold and weak", which penetrates through a narrow bay, attenuates this tension of colours and further reinforces the dramatic tension of the scene.

Symbolic scope

For Repin and his contemporaries, the painting's first symbolic function is to express the existence of violence and moral rejection, which must be the object. According to Ivan Kramskoi; "it seems that a human being, after having carefully looked at this painting, even if only once, will be forever protected from the wild beast he has, as they say, in him".

The representation of the aftermath of the father's altercation with his son is a historical episode and illustrates a person's "eternal" capacity to physically harm their neighbour. The painting can be understood as a pictorial parable of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill".

The picture also seemed to approach a more-particularly religious inspiration, showing "Christian love and forgiveness" can repair crime, even filicide. The tsarevich's gesture and face are "almost like that of an icon", the tear that runs down the wing of his nose seem to depict forgiveness. The similarity of the gesture of Ivan the Terrible's right arm with those of the figures in the two Rembrandt paintings also aligns with this position.

In the interpretation of the work, the personality of the writer Vsevolod Garshin provides additional details. In this period, Repin used Garshin as a model in several other paintings, including Portrait (1884) and the large painting They Did Not Expect Him, in which Garshin poses for the main character. Work on They Did Not Expect Him began in 1884 and ended the year of Garshin's suicide in 1888.

Repin appreciated Vsevolod Garshin, whom he considered an "incarnation of the divine" during their friendship and after his death. He wrote "his pensive eyes, often mixed with tears provoked by some injustice, his humble and delicate attitude, his angelic personality, with the purity of a dove, were those of a God". Repin's painting refers to Garshin's physical features, his personality and his deeply peaceful thought.

A representation of power

The political significance of the painting cannot be eluded because of the reactions to which it was immediately the subject. Repin combined Ivan the Terrible's killing of his son with the assassination of Alexander II. Repin and Russian art critics did not expand upon this point; however French critics did. According to Alain Besançon, the tsarevich's murder by the tsar is a central scene of the Russian myth, which Repin was the first to represent: the history of Russia would be built on the sacrifice of sons killed by their fathers.

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". It makes a link with the trial of Tsarevich Alexis, son of Peter the Great, and his death as a result of torture. This other conflict between a father and his son is the theme of Nikolai Ge's 1871 painting Peter the Great Interrogating the Tsarevich Alexei at Peterhof.

1909 version

In 1909, on a commission from the industrialist and collector Stepan Ryabushinsky, Repin painted a second version of Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, which he called Filicide (Сыноубийца). It is on display at Voronezh Museum of Fine Arts. The second version was painted 25 years later than the first. In this version, Repin added a female character in the background and unveiled more colours than in the original painting, taking it in a more "luxuriant" direction, while Tsar Ivan's face is collapsed in grief.

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:

I was seized with a feeling of complete appreciation for Repin. There it is, the thing, what a level of talent ... And how it's painted, my God, how it's painted! ... And what is this murder, carried out by a wild beast and a psychopath? ... A father hits his son with his sceptre in the temple? One moment ... He utters a cry of terror ... He grabs him, he sits him on the ground, he raises him ... He presses one of his hands on the wound in the temple (and blood gushes out of the cracks between the fingers) ... and as he bawls ... It's an animal, howling with fear ... the very spot that the son has marked with his temple ... Really, this scene is drowning us in half-light and a kind of natural tragic.

— Ivan Kramskoi

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 Georgy Khruslov, 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.

Some Russian nationalists continue to protest the painting's exhibition because they believe it was painted as part of a foreign smear campaign and that the scene depicted is inaccurate.

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. The director of the Tretyakov Gallery Irina Lebedeva formally opposed the request.

In May 2018, the canvas was again attacked in the Tretyakov Gallery by a drunken visitor who broke its protective glass with a metal bar. The painting suffered serious damage; it was pierced in three places in the central part of the work, which depicts the figure of the tsarevich. The gallery said the frame was also badly damaged but that "by a happy coincidence" the most precious elements of the painting, the depiction of the figures' faces and hands, were not damaged. According to some Russian media, the vandal said he had attacked the painting because he thought the depiction was inaccurate. The attacker was imprisoned for two-and-a-half years. 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 Mazurin chronicle, reports the following:

In the summer of 1581, it was from the Sovereign Emperor and Grand Prince Ivan Vassilievitch, that his son, his greatness Prince Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, shining with wise meaning and grace and separated from the branch of life by a blade, received evil, and from this evil, he died.

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) Ivan Timofeev 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.

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.

— Antonio Possevino, Historical writings about Russia in the 16th century

Stories by Russian historians

18th-century Russian historian Nikolay Karamzin also believed the Tsarevich died because of his father but under different circumstances.

He (Ivan the Terrible) put his hand on him (Tsarevich). Boris Godunov wanted to come to his aid but the Tsar inflicted several wounds to him with the point of his sceptre and struck the Tsarevich with it on the head. He then fell to the ground, spilling his blood. The father's fury disappeared. Paling with fear, trembling, in complete shock, he exclaimed "I killed my son" and he threw himself down to kiss him; pouring out the blood flowing from a deep wound, he wept, sobbed, called for the doctors. He implored the mercy of God and the forgiveness of his son.

— Nikolay Karamzin

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.