Scene from the Time of Troubles (Saving Maryna Mniszech during the Uprising against the Poles on 17 May 1606 in Moscow)

When painting subjects from Russian history, Romantic artists loved to depict important or exciting events and bold, colourful, adventurous types. In this respect, the history of the Time of Troubles provided particularly rewarding material.

The composition has clear elements of theatricity. The dark drapings around the window act like a curtain, separating the two groups of people in the foreground from the backdrop of the Kremlin (with the Ivan the Great Belltower) outside.

Maryna Mniszech was the daughter of the waywode of Sandomierz and the wife of the False Dmitry, pretender to the throne. For one week, she was the tsarina of Russia – and the first woman ever to be crowned as such before Catherine I.

On the night of 16/17 May 1606, an uprising against the Polish invaders broke out in Moscow. The conspirators burst into the Kremlin in search of the False Dmitry and Maryna only succeeded in saving herself because she was not recognised.

The scene captures the climax of the uprising, when a loyal servant saves Maryna, who has fainted into the arms of her servants. He meets the conspirators with a sword in his hand, restraining the crowd until the boyars arrive to drive them away.

Maryna Mniszech lives on in the memory of Russians as an “atheist” and a “witch”. The escape of the Catholic adventuress is explained by the fact that she turned herself into a magpie and, in this way, managed to slip out of the Kremlin.