A Possible Source for the Depiction of the Horses in the 17th-century Equestrian Portraits of the Tsars

One of the significant cultural changes taking place in Early Modern Russia was the development of portraiture influenced by the artistic tastes of Western Europe. Among the well-known examples of such portraits (generally termed parsuny) are equestrian portraits of Tsars Mikhail Fedorovich and Aleksei Mikhailovich. There is a consensus that these images were painted in the 1670s or early 1680s, most probably by artists working in the Moscow Armory (Oruzheinaia palata) who also were illustrating the Tituliarnik, first produced in 1672 and known in subsequent presentation copies. Scholarly analysis of the royal equine portraits has focused on the depictions of the tsars. However, little attention has been devoted to the horses on which they ride and the possible sources for the equine imagery. This article focuses on the horses and argues that the artists who depicted them may well have been inspired at least in part by the elegant engravings in Antoine de Pluvinel’s book on equitation. The Pluvinel books (two different editions) had been obtained in Moscow and were the source for Russian translations whose presentation manuscript copies were illustrated the original engravings and illuminated by the artists in the Kremlin’s royal workshop.