“Mistakes were made”: text and image in the Litsevoi Letopisnyi Svod account of the Staritskii rebellion

One of the murky episodes of Ivan the Terrible’s minority is the revolt of his uncle, Andrei Staritskii, in the spring of 1537, which ended with the arrest of the prince and his death in prison in December. The Litsevoi Letopisnyi Svod reproduces the account given in the Voskresenskaia Chronicle, which does not blame Andrei but attributes the uprising to the agitation of unnamed malevolent advisors in both Moscow and Staritsa. The 48 illustrations of the text follow this interpretation and sometimes go beyond it to suggest a certain sympathy for Andrei. In their dynamic depiction of events, the artists use innovative techniques to show progression of the action while retaining traditional representations of human figures and clothing. One cannot tell the good counselors from the bad, and victims of repression express resignation rather than fear or pain. The fact that it presents this episode in a manner favorable to Andrei is perhaps one of the reasons why the compilation of the Litsevoi Letopisnyi Svod was abandoned. In 1569 Ivan the Terrible forced Vladimir, the son of Andrei Staritskii, to drink poison. After that, it is highly probable that the tsar wanted to read an account of the 1537 revolt that would graphically reveal the treason of the House of Staritsa.