Peter’s Daughter Ascends the Throne
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	“ The Entrance of Empress Elizabeth into Moscow for Her Coronation,” from: Obstoiatel’noe opisanie … koronovaniia … Imperatritsy Elisavety Petrovny [Detailed Description … of the Coronation of … Empress Elizabeth Petrovna] St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaia Akademiia Nauk, 1744 NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division Elizabeth usurped the throne from a perfectly legitimate monarch. But since Ivan VI (r. 1740–41) was an infant with little Russian blood (he was the great-grandson of Peter’s half brother, but his father was German and his mother half-German) and his entourage acted like carpetbaggers, the coup d’état was welcomed. Elizabeth’s splendid coronation celebrated the new empress as a savior who had spared Russia from the degradations of the Germans, as the return of Russian blood to the throne (she was the daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I), as the clear choice of the people, and as the reincarnation of her father’s image of a reforming tsar. This engraving of the lengthy procession that accompanied the empress to the coronation capital, Moscow, is from a volume specially prepared for the coronation, which took place on April 25, 1742.