Галерея российских царей

From The Publisher

The book you are holding in your hands is actually a reprint of an old edition that featured a gallery of portraits of Russian tsars. The cover and the title page of the old book haven’t survived – the book has come down to us without them, so the exact year of publication, as well as the authentic title, is not known. We also could not manage to find out the name of the author of the portraits – whether he was a famous artist or an amateur… But the very idea of such a book seemed to us interesting and worth the attention.

The old book opens with the portrait of Rurik, and ends with Alexander II, “incumbent”, as stated in the caption. From this, we have derived that the book was published during the years of the reign of the latter (1855–1881). The editor dared to complement the publication with the portraits of the two last tsars whose reigns followed Alexander II’s. Otherwise, the visual solution of the original edition remains unaffected.

The edition of the XIX century did not contain any text. We have added a brief description of the reigns, in English and Russian languages, so that the travel throughout the “Gallery of Russian Tsars” would be informative and interesting. For the content, the works by Russian historians, N. M. Karamzin and S. M. Solovyov, have been used, who wrote their famous historical opuses in the century when the book was first published.

In our opinion, the efforts of many professionals have helped this item of antiquity acquire a second life, and it would serve as a nice gift for those who like to see the history of a country through its personalities.