Czarina Elizabeth astride a horse performing a courbette, Csarina and mount with heads turned to the left, in the right hand a marshal’s baton, in the left hand the reins, wearing the uniform of a colonel in the Preobrazhensky Life-Guard Regiment with tall black bucket top boots, a black tricorne and a green skirt trimmed with gilt borders, on her chest and sash the star of the Cross of the Order of St Andrew, next to the horse a black page looking up at the Czarina, base with polychrome leaves and flowers, porcelain, polychromed and gilt, height 24 cm, length 25 cm, small restorations, marshal’s baton very slightly chipped, Meissen, underglaze blue crossed swords mark with loop mark, second half of the 19th century, model 1095, former no. 48, painter no. 66, model by Johann Joachim Kändler 1743 (Ru)

Czarina Elizabeth Petrovna’s military dress reflects the fact that it was the Preobrazhensky Regiment which was instrumental in gaining her the imperial crown during Elisabeth’s December 1741 coup d'état against Czarina Anna Ivanovna. Kändler created this group in around 1743 after a copy of the painting by Georg Christoph Grooth, 1716–1749, at the Moscow Tretjakov Gallery.

Lit.:
Meißen für die Zaren, Munich 2004, p. 57, ill. 46, 47, p. 101, ill. 165;