Chapter 4 explores how Sigismund von Herberstein used the visual in his travel account. Working with an accomplished engraver from Nuremberg, Augustin Hirschvogel, Herberstein devised relatively few illustrations for his account. But they were carefully linked to his text and proved widely influential. His portrait of Vasilii III shows evidence of Hirschvogel’s Habsburg portraits done in Nuremberg, but reflects Herberstein’s acquaintance with the Grand Prince. Perhaps most important was Herberstein’s map (1546), considered for the next few decades the most accurate map of Muscovy. The chapter then explores the imagery that Herberstein added in subsequent editions and concludes by tracking how his text, map and imagery traveled into new, sometimes pirated, editions and locations after his death in 1566.

Chapter 3 introduces Sigismund von Herberstein, Habsburg diplomat and humanist scholar. After two embassies to Muscovy (1517, 1526) where Herberstein assiduously observed his surroundings, he composed an account of Muscovy (Rerum moscoviticarum commentarii, 1549) that became the standard reference for the next half-century or more. This chapter explores how he composed his work as a “chorography,” and how he assembled sources, how he interpreted Russian rulers, religion and society.

The Moscow principality was the scene of an intense battle over succession in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. After its end Prince Vasilii II designated his son Ivan as his successor. Ivan III’s two marriages created a problem. Ivan Ivanovich, his son by the first wife, died, leaving a son Dmitrii as a possible heir. Ivan III’s second wife, Sophia Palaiologina, had a son, Vasilii. In 1497 Ivan chose Dmitrii as his heir, but soon changed his mind. The designated heir was his son Vasilii. Vasilii in turn had no children by his first wife, Solomoniia Saburova, so he sent her to a convent and married the Lithuanian princess Elena Glinskaia. During this time the ceremonial oaths of loyalty came to include not just the Grand Prince but his wife and family.