Painted Plaque with a Scene of the Church Elders Informing Michael of His Election as Tsar

Two scenes from the life of Mikhail Feodorvich, the first Romanov tsar, are depicted on these plaques. In the first, the delegates of the zemskii sobor, the legislative assembly, have arrived in the town of Kostroma, where Michael has been hiding with his mother. They have come to inform him that he has been elected tsar. Visible in the background is the Ipat'ev monastery of Kostroma.

Mikhail's election as the founder of the Romanov dynasty marked the closing of the "Time of Troubles," a period at the beginning of the seventeenth century during which Russia had experienced fifteen years of turmoil, famine and foreign occupation.

In the second panel, Michael is being crowned with the early fourteenth-century Crown of Monomakh in front of Moscow's Uspenskii Cathedral. His coronation on 3 March 1613 initiated 304 years of Romanov rule.

These scenes were based on miniatures appearing in Book on the Election to the Russian Throne of the Great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Duke Mikhail, a manuscript commissioned in 1672 and completed the following year at the Kremlin Armory. It included 21 watercolor illustrations by Ivan Maksimov and Spiridon Grigorjev. An edition of this book, printed in 1856, served as a source for numerous artists and craftsmen. The scene of boyars pleading with Mikhail to accept the throne was adapted from page 4, whereas the other, the coronation scene, was a loose rendition of pages 13-14.

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Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.

Leo Kaplan, New York; Jean M. Riddell, Washington, D.C., June 6, 1995, by purchase [with 2010.17.266]; Walters Art Museum, 2010, by bequest.