Peter the Great Interrogating the Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich at Peterhof

The scene is a real confrontation from 1718. Peter the Great, who had dragged Russia toward Europe by force, is questioning his own son Alexei, who had fled abroad and become a rallying point for everyone who hated the tsar's reforms. Ge sets it in a modest room of the Monplaisir palace at Peterhof, with nothing but a table of documents between them. There is no violence in the picture, only a father looking down and a son looking away, yet everyone knew how it ended: Alexei was condemned and died in prison under interrogation that same year. Ge showed the painting in 1871 at the first exhibition of the Wanderers, the artists who had broken with the official academy, and Pavel Tretyakov bought it before the public had even seen it.