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Abstract:

The article analyzes the symbols of the personality and reign of Catherine II, which had a certain iconographic embodiment. Some of them were traditional for the Russian monarchy, others were updated or even created anew during Catherine’s reign. The symbol of the sun is traditional not only for Russian, but also for world monarchical symbols. It had been actively used in relation to rulers in literary rhetoric since the times of Ancient Rus’. In Peter’s time, the solar symbolism of the monarchy received an emblematic embodiment. Under Peter’s succesors, the symbol of the sun, including the rising sun, marked the beginning of a new reign. Under Catherine, solar symbolism was enriched with a mythological metaphor — the image of Phoebus, which correlated with the image of the Empress. Minerva, whose most important quality was wisdom, served as a symbolic image of Russian empresses, starting with Catherine I. However, it was only under Catherine II that this image was actually canonized in culture as a direct mythological personification of the empress. Certain motives in the semantics of Minerva were directly correlated with various events and deeds of Catherine’s reign. The emblematic image of a bee extracting honey, symbolizing benefits, including public ones, was Catherine’s personal pictorial motto. It was embodied both in various works of visual culture and in literary works, remaining relevant until the beginning of the 19^th century.

Keywords: symbolism, emblematics, poetry, Catherine the Great, the Russian monarchy.