Portrait of Peter I

Unknown artist. Mid-18th c.

The festive portrait of Peter I at the Kadriorg Art Museum has been associated with the tsar’s visit to Riga in 1711. After the visit, the Brotherhood of Blackheads in Riga commissioned the tsar’s court painter, Johann Gottfried Tannauer (1680–1737), to paint a full portrait of the emperor. The painting itself has not survived, but there is a later repetition that is similar to the portrait here. Altogether, there are five portraits in Estonia that are similar to the one at the Kadriorg Museum; they were painted by different artists and at different times, and no such portraits of Peter I are known to exist in Russia or in other European countries. This leads to the conclusion that the painting represents a local type of portrait, in which the first Russian Emperor is depicted as a European army commander, dressed in armour and holding a truncheon in his hand. The fleet of warships in the background refers to Tallinn as Russia’s naval port.