Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan

Repin began the painting in 1883 and completed it in 1885, a period when Russian Realism was operating under intense political pressure. The work was triggered, according to the artist's own account, by a symphony concert: Rimsky-Korsakov's Antar suite stirred something in him that he connected immediately to the historical episode of 1581, when Ivan IV struck his son and heir during an argument, inflicting a fatal wound. That act effectively ended the Rurik dynasty and set Russia on the path to the Time of Troubles. When the painting was exhibited at the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) exhibition in 1885, it caused an immediate scandal: Tsar Alexander III ordered it removed from display after only three days, deeming its portrayal of a tsar committing filicide a subversive commentary on autocratic power. The ban was eventually lifted through the intervention of collector Pavel Tretyakov, who had already purchased the work and who ultimately donated it to what is now the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. In 1913 the painting was attacked by a religious zealot who slashed the canvas three times before being restrained; the damage was subsequently restored. That act of violence against a painting about violence has become part of the work's long afterlife. Repin's achievement was to collapse the historical and the personal into a single moment of irrevocable consequence, making Russian Realist painting answer questions about power and guilt that official portraiture was designed to avoid.