Chapter 7 explores the explosion of visual sources about Russia in the second half of the sixteenth century. Most notorious of them were the illustrated pamphlets about Ivan the Terrible’s attack on Livonia during the Baltic wars of the 1560s, where Ivan and his army were often depicted as hated Turks. An entirely different image of Muscovy was projected in costume books of the time, where the “typical dress” of Muscovite men and women resembled that of other Europeans, even if it was somewhat fanciful for lack of eyewitness knowledge. Finally, late sixteenth-century maps of Muscovy provide some illustration as well, often repurposing images from Herberstein’s account and costume books.

After a fourteen-year boyar regency, Ivan the Terrible was crowned tsar and married to Anastasiia Romanova. In 1553 the tsar’s illness led to a succession crisis: some boyars hesitated to swear loyalty to his infant son. The birth of two more sons, Ivan and Fyodor, guaranteed an heir. As the oldest boy grew up, Tsar Ivan brought him to meetings with boyars and ambassadors, took him along for military campaigns, and had him married. The son’s untimely death left his younger brother the heir. Tsar Fyodor was incapable of effective rule and did not produce a son, leading to the election of his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, as his heir.