Astrachańska, rudolfińska i Rychterowa. Moskiewskie korony polskich Wazów

The author of the article puts forward the thesis that since 1611/1612 the Polish Vasas were in possession of two crowns from the Kremlin treasury: the "Siberian" crown ordered in Prague by Boris Godynov, in a form referring to Rudolf II's Hauskrone and the design of Jacob Mores located in Hamburg, as well as the so-called Astrakhan cap originally ordered by Ivan the Terrible from English goldsmiths. Using the first insignia as an example, the study illustrates the primary and secondary functions of a work of art created at the junction of the West and the East. The central point of the campaign to give the idea of the Moscow Empire a symbolic dimension (and to strengthen the planned Godunov dynasty on the Moscow throne), saturated with manifest values (in accordance with the principle of transferring prestige: the tsar equal to the emperor), only once (the coronation of Dmitry I the False, 1606) fulfilled a ritual function. Concentrating the unfulfilled ambitions of Sigismund III, after his death it quickly changed from an instrument of dynastic and family policy into an expressive symbol of the "Muscovite advantages" not only of the Vasas, Żółkiewiczs and Gosiewskis, but of the entire noble nation, co-creating the historical policy of the second half of the 17th century. The crowning achievement of this myth was the creation by Tobiasz Richter of a replica (the " Richter’s" crown) of the original insignia, destroyed on the orders of John Casimir, a kind of simulacrum, which, however, until the end of the 17th century was described in the inventories of the Crown Treasury as an original crown from the Kremlin.