Боярский свадебный пир

By the 1880s, Konstantin Makovsky had turned his Saint Petersburg studio into something close to a museum of old Muscovy — chests of 17th-century kokoshniks, brocades, silver cups and drinking vessels he collected obsessively. This wedding feast is staged out of that hoard. The scene is a boyar marriage of the 1600s, the moment the guests call on the couple to kiss while a roast swan is carried in. Makovsky finished it in 1883, when educated Russia was rediscovering its pre-Petrine past. The painting never stayed home. In 1885 an American jeweller bought it in Antwerp, reportedly outbidding Tsar Alexander III, and it crossed the Atlantic, where it hangs today near Washington.