How you can use this image
This image is available to be shared and re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-NC-SA).
This image can be reproduced in any way but your use of it cannot be for any kind of commercial purpose. Any work you create using this image must also be
Wherever you reproduce the image or an altered version of it, you must attribute the original creators (acknowledge the original artist(s), the person/organisation that took the photograph of the work) and any other stated rights holders.
Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find more images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.
DownloadNotes
Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.
The Museum’s only detailed source of information about this portrait, at present, is a printed nineteenth-century list of oil paintings in the Museum which identifies it as a portrait of Peter I, Emperor of Russia and states that it is ‘from an original, drawn by Klingstad, in the possession of the Earl of Hertford, 1725; then Ambassador at Petersburgh’… ‘From the Old Cottonian Library’. The Cottonian Library was given to the nation in 1700 and eventually stored at Ashburnham House where it was almost destroyed by fire in 1731. It was subsequently moved to Westminster. Since this portrait is dated 1725 it must have been an addition to the Cotton collection but whether it originates with the family or became attached in Ashburnham House or Westminster is not known. Also, the Earl of Hertford does not appear to have been Ambassador to Russia but was Ambassador to France, 1763–1765. The portrait is briefly mentioned in one of the Museum’s earliest guide books of 1761: ‘Peter the Great Czar of Muscovy’.
Title
Peter I 'The Great' (1672–1725), Emperor of Russia
Date
c.1725?
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 129 x W 102 cm
Accession number
Painting.21
Acquisition method
gift, said to have accompanied the Cotton Collection, 1753
Work type
Painting
