Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan

Art History You Were Never Taught

Today, I will tell you about a painting that is not as famous as it should be, and an art history that your teachers never talked about. Imagine the moment when a father kills his only son and heir in a fit of rage. He cradles his bleeding head. His eyes widen with the horror of the realisation of what he has done. This is no fairy tale; it is a historical event--Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, also known as Ivan the Terrible, really did kill his son Ivan Ivanovitch in this way on November 16, 1581. And the magnificent painter, Ilya Repin, captured him in his painting in 1885, entitled, “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan”.

In Russian fairy tales, the Prince is always called Prince Ivan traditionally. Ivan Tsarevitch and the Grey Wolf is one of the most famous fairy tales in Russian folklore and is depicted by Viktor Vasnetsov in a gorgeous painting of the magical wolf flying through the forest with the Prince and Princess on his back. In another painting, Victor Vasnetsov captures the story of Prince Ivan flying on a magic carpet through the air with a magic golden phoenix captured in a cage. It is not a stretch then to connect the Prince Ivan in Repin’s painting with the Prince Ivan of Russian myth and fairy tales.

When we look at the Prince’s clothes in Repin’s painting, he is wearing bright green boots gilded with gold embroidery. He has a beautiful silver and pink coat. The bright colours of the Prince’s clothes contrast strongly with the simple black costume of his father. The Prince, whose blood flows bright red down his head, and who looks tall and young, seems like he was full of vitality and potential, which was all cut short by one brutish accident. As we gaze into the gaunt face of Ivan the Terrible, we wonder how such a weak looking man might have done something like that. He clutches his son, but his eyes look at something which is not in the room. They look as though he is away into the future, wonder what would happen to his kingdom now without a prince, or to his own life now without an heir. He is replaying his moment of wrath again and again in his mind, hoping somehow that focusing on it will reveal some way to escape the inevitable, fatal, consequence before him.

Around the room there is evidence of the fight. A stool has been turned over. The cushions lie in disarray. The carpets are crumpled where the Prince might have tripped. The murder weapon, a staff, lies in the foreground, the line of it bringing visual harmony to the piece, and its appearance, a material and cold realisation: what is done cannot be undone.

When we look carefully at the Prince himself, we can see that he is not quite dead yet. There is tension still in his left arm as he props himself up. His eye seems to still have a spark, quickly diminishing. A tear is frozen on his cheek. But we know that in a moment he will be limp.

Repin’s genius is revealed in his ability to capture the liminal moment between life and death. Through his decisions in the details he included and how he choreographed them, one single powerful visual composition unfolds an entire story in an instant and demonstrates a mastery of story telling ability. But why did Repin want to tell this story and that too nearly 300 years after the fact?

Historically, the event of the murder left Russia unstable. Ivan the Terrible’s death in 1584 was followed by the Time of Troubles characterised by chaos, famine and foreign invasion. In 1881, Tsar Alexander II had also been assassinated by revolutionaries and this left a troubling impact on Russia. Indeed only about forty years later, the next royal family of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his three daughters, wife and son, would be brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks as well. There was clearly a brutal, regicidal energy in the air in Russia and Repin, being an excellent artist, picked up on it and put it in his artwork.

In the fairy tale, the proper prince ascends the throne and all becomes right again in the Kingdom. In Russia, the Princes were being slaughtered and foreigners, revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, were quickly gaining power. Repin predicted, but was not to know, that the 20th century for Russia would be marred with famine and death at scaled hitherto to not known by the innocent pre-war world.

Repin’s painting was not merely an ideological or political critique or message. The main purpose of it was to bring visceral, human recognition of the impact of senseless violence. Through the realism, and the powerful visual storytelling of his painting, the viewer can really fell the horror, regret and tragedy of senseless bloodshed.

This painting in fact inspired such a response in the people who viewed it that one man was inspired to madness upon viewing it in 1913 and slashed the painting, shouting “enough with violence, enough with blood!”.

Russia is in an interesting position today politically. It has become the scapegoat for the west to project its problems onto. Russia alleviates the west of the burden of looking inward at their own rotten political madness. So long as Russia is their villain, they can be the hero and any means the hero must pursue to his end is in this way justified to them.

Russian art is purposely neglected in mainstream art education because of many such political issues, but also, importantly, because Russian art is so real, and so powerful. Once someone has studied the power and beauty of proper art, fake art will reveal itself much more quickly. Modern art defendors often contend that modern art is the best at capturing powerful feelings, and complex emotional and ideological subject matter. Yet, Repin was able to compose a visual scene without resorting to meaningless abstract. The story that he wishes to tell can be understood at a glance. Even without my writing next to it, one would understand every element of the harrowing moment captured therein. I hope that you have enjoyed looking, nevertheless, with me.