The monument of an armoured commander holding a baton – with a figure emblematic of fame hovering with a laurel crown and trumpet to one side – is almost certainly intended to represent Peter the Great. During his lifetime the emperor was often portrayed so armed with part of the Russian fleet visible beyond, as in Sir Godfrey Kneller’s celebrated portrait painted in 1698. (The background of the present composition, with shipping to the left and a town to the right, may be interpreted as a celebration of the emperor as the founder of both the Russian navy and the city of St Petersburg.)

The base shows the monument to Kuzma Minin (d. 1616) and Dmitry Pozharsky (1577 1642), the leaders of an all-Russian volunteer army that in 1612 expelled the forces of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth under the command of Sigismund III, King of Poland (1566–1632), thereby ending the Time of Troubles. Following a competition in 1808, the commission for the monument was awarded to Ivan Martos (1754 1835), a champion of neoclassicism in Russia. The model was completed in 1813, but was not cast until 1816 due to the upheavals following Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. The monument, installed in the middle of Red Square in front of the Kremlin, was unveiled in 1818; in 1937 it was moved close to St Basil’s Cathedral, as its original position obstructed the military parades of the Communist era.

The representation of this and other patriotic monuments is a reflection of the widespread desire to define national identity that swept across Europe in the years following the Congress of Vienna. These subjects became increasingly favoured for niello decoration, eclipsing the hunting and bucolic scenes that had been so popular in the eighteenth century.

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