Coronation of Czarina Elizabeth, Moscow, April 25, 1742
Unknown Artist
1742
Medium
Mezzotint
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1944
Accession Number
44.21.3(45)
Tags
FireworksCeremony
About this artwork
This commemorative print documents one of eighteenth-century Russia's most significant ceremonial occasions: the coronation of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in Moscow on April 25, 1742. Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, ascended to the Russian throne through a palace coup in late 1741, and her coronation ceremony in the Kremlin's Assumption Cathedral legitimized her rule through traditional Orthodox ritual and imperial pageantry. Such prints served crucial functions in disseminating images of...