Originally published at: The dread-filled look in Ivan The Terrible's eyes sends a shiver down my spine every time I look in this painting. | Boing Boing
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His son’s left hand keeps distracting me. What’s going on there?
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Ain’t Repin a magnificent “realist” painter? I’ve used several images of his paintings as ‘screensavers’. particularly enjoy Repin’s mastery of facial emotion expressed in “The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire”
@bryan … i always assumed that the Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, Ivan the Terrible’s son as depicted wasn’t quite dead …yet
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I ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole on this. The first attack was by someone mentally ill, whose wealthy father got them out of the asylum they were placed in becuase of it, and the second attack was a guy who said he was drinking vodka and something took him over.
Sounds like a very Call of Cthulhu game style painting.
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Yeah, is that an iphone or a android product?
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Death is awkward.
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It leaves a stain, permanently.
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Out, damned spot; out, I say!
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In case anyone wondered why:
In 1581, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law, Yelena Sheremeteva, for wearing immodest clothing, which
may havecaused a miscarriage. His second son, also named Ivan, upon learning of that, engaged in a heated argument with his father, which resulted in Ivan striking his son in the head with his pointed staff and fatally wounding him.
What struck me in reading the wiki link was: three of Ivan’s wives died of poisoning (allegedly by ambitious families who wished to insert their own candidate for his next wife)— which sounds so suspect on many levels. I guess I’d need to read up on this, but: if you are Tsar of All the Russias, and someone murders your wife, you put a stop to the wife-killings the first time,
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The (Old) Tretyakov Gallery is full of bangers by Repin, and countless other awesome Russian paintings, including icons by Andrei Rublev himself. Shame that I don’t see myself ever visiting that country any time soon, given how scary, xenophobic, conservative, and violent a place it’s become (and it was no cake walk when I lived there in 06-07).
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Repin is a great artist. I love They Did Not Expect Him.
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It sends a shiver down my lobster claws every time I look at it.
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Especially when there’s some dude there painting a picture of it happening, and you wonder if the last thing you’ll see is that asshole squinting at you form behind his thumb.
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That painting is even more frightening than Fuseli’s Nightmare, who lives at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Thank God no blood got on those sexy embroidered boots - hubba hubba!
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People like to point to them as an example of rent-seeking; but there’s a reason why heir stylists are generally required to be licensed professionals.
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I thought it was a Goya before reading the article. I find Goya’s Saturn devouring his son is equally haunting.
I didn’t know Repin until today, I like his realistic style very much. Thanks for sharing!
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Russian art? Reminds me that I’ve been meaning to watch again this great movie. 
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NOBODY EXPECTS THE… oh, wait. Sorry. Carry on.
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Amongst our many weapons are: 1) exile to Siberia, 2) labor camps, 3) summary execution, 4) degradation and impoverishment of your family, 5) erasure of your existence from all records… and I’m sure we will think of some more.
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