Maslennikova Irina

The Golden Tsarina Chamber of the Grаnd Kremlin Palace: Topics to Further Research

Abstract

A number of publications by scholars of the previous centuries had dealt with the history of the Russian royal ceremonial and the royal family domestic life. This included Russian historians of the 18–19th centuries, as well as many publications of archival documents. Specifically, the contribution by a famous Russian historian Ivan Zabelin has to be noted, who studied both the ceremonial and daily life of the Russian monarchs. Unfortunately, little attention was paid to the issue by the Soviet scholarship, yet there has been growing interest on behalf of Russian historians in the past decades. This article studies the history of the throne room of the Russian tsarinas — the Golden Tsarina Chamber of the Grand Kremlin Palace built in the15–16th centuries as part of Ivan III royal palace. This Chamber, hidden in the surrounding palace constructions of the later epochs, has been until recently rarely paid attention to by the historians of art and architecture. The Chamber was first mentioned in the Russian chronicles as late as at the end of the 16th century, and there had been no suffi cient scientific data on the earlier period. The author is focusing on the problems of periodization, terminology and the structure of the ancient royal chambers, its usage for official ceremonies and in daily life of the Russian tsars. The article also gives interpretation of the murals of the Golden Tsarina Chamber, often considered as best examples of the monumental art of the 17th century.

Keywords

Moscow Kremlin, history, historiography, source study, palace complex, sovereign court, Tsarina’s Chamber, throne room, painting, restoration, conceptual purpose

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Information about the author

Maslennikova Irina