Peeter I ikoon Tallinna Nikolai kirikus: ikonograafia ja ideoloogia
Peter I’s Icon from the St Nicholas Church in Tallinn: Iconography and Ideology

Summary/Abstract: In 1711, the Governor of ‘Ingria, Korelia and Estlandia’, Prince Aleksandr Menshikov, commissioned an icon for the Church of St Nicholas of Myra, the oldest Russian Orthodox church in Tallinn (Reval). The icon was presented to Peter I at the time of the tsar’s first visit to Reval, the newly acquired Lutheran city. This article will focus on the historical and ideological meaning of The Liturgy of the Lord, the icon’s connection to the Russian imperial ideology of the period, and the strategies which were chosen by the icon painter to represent this ideology in the context of a newly conquered Lutheran city. The article also attempts to decipher the hidden message of the icon, which reflects the tsar’s very personal worries and anxieties regarding his relationship with Prince Menshikov and Peter’s upcoming marriage to his longtime mistress and the mother of his children, Catherine (Ekaterina) Alekseevna.

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