The Attack

In February 1899 Tsar Nicholas II issued a manifesto that let Russian law override Finland's own, the sharp edge of a long campaign to fold the autonomous Grand Duchy into the empire. That same year Edvard Isto answered with this picture. A two-headed eagle, the Russian imperial bird, claws at a woman in white, the Finnish Maiden, trying to wrench from her arms the book of Finnish law. Nothing about it is subtle, and it was not meant to be. The canvas was shown in secret at a seaside villa in Helsinki, and thousands of prints were run off in Finland and Germany. When the gendarmes got wind of it, Isto slipped out through Sweden with the painting and its copies.