Repin used Grigoriy Myasoyedov, his friend and fellow artist, as the model for Ivan the Terrible, and writer Vsevolod Garshin for the Tsarevich.

On 13 March 1881 in Saint Petersburg, the reformist Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki, a member of the revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya.

[2][3] Repin, who visited Saint Petersburg in mid-February 1881 for the opening of the Wanderers' exhibition, was present when the tsar was killed.

[4] Several of Repin's next paintings; Refusal of confession (Отказ от исповеди; 1881), Arrest of a propagandist (Арест пропагандиста, 1882) and They Did Not Expect Him (Не ждали; 1884–1888); were devoted to the Pervomartovtsy.

He also wrote several times in his memoirs about this period of his creations: "This year followed like a trace of blood, our feelings were bruised by the horrors of the contemporary world, it was frightening to confront it: it will end badly! ...

[7] The music of Antar's bloody second movement[8] inspired Repin the most; he said in his memoirs:[9][1] In Moscow in 1881, while I was listening to a new piece by Rimsky-Korsakov, Vengeance ("Месть").

[9]Repin's painting is also striking because of its representation of blood, which is seeping from the Tsarevich's temple and remains on the floor in a puddle after his father has picked him up.

According to Repin's memoirs, he was influenced by his 1883 trip to Europe, where he witnessed bullfights: Misfortune, death, murder and blood make up a hole that draws you into it with force.

[10]According to Polish-American art historian Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, the incorporation of Garshin's face completes and allows her to be fully satisfied with the painting.

[12][11] The bloodstain where the Tsarevich's head rests on the floor, which is very visible in the oil sketch Repin made in 1883, and which he kept and resumed later, is erased in the shadows of the final painting.

[11] The painting also shows, in its centre, the reality and the irreversibility of the tsar's act: the blood flows from his son's temple and the attempt Ivan the Terrible makes to contain it with his left hand is hopeless.

[11][4] The construction of the painting is based on objects and pieces of furniture that are distributed around the characters: the crumpled red carpets on the floor, the Tsarevich's boots, the sceptre, the throne that was overturned during the argument, one of the ornamental balls that sparkles at the level of the son's eyes, and his cushion.

[12] Behind the figures, other pieces of furniture, such as the stove, the mirror of the Armor Museum and the chest of the Rumyantsev Palace, are less discernible.

[6] The representation of the aftermath of the father's altercation with his son is a historical episode and illustrates a person's "eternal" capacity to physically harm their neighbour.

[6][13] The picture also seemed to approach a more-particularly religious inspiration, showing "Christian love and forgiveness" can repair crime, even filicide.

He wrote "his pensive eyes, often mixed with tears provoked by some injustice, his humble and delicate attitude, his angelic personality, with the purity of a dove, were those of a God".

According to Alain Besançon, the tsarevich's murder by the tsar is a central scene of the Russian myth, which Repin was the first to represent: the history of Russia would be built on the sacrifice of sons killed by their fathers.

This other conflict between a father and his son is the theme of Nikolai Ge's 1871 painting Peter the Great Interrogates Tsarevich Alexis in Peterhof [ru].

In this version, Repin added a female character in the background and unveiled more colours than in the original painting, taking it in a more "luxuriant" direction, while Tsar Ivan's face is collapsed in grief.

It's an animal, howling with fear ... the very spot that the son has marked with his temple ... Really, this scene is drowning us in half-light and a kind of natural tragic.The very conservative Attorney General of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev told Alexander III of his "repulsion" and perplexity about the painting,[20] which did not please the Tsar and his entourage, and on 1 April 1885, viewings of the painting were forbidden.

It was the first painting to be censored in the Russian Empire,[23] and Pavel Tretyakov, who bought it, was told "not to expose it, and more generally not to allow it to be brought to the attention of the public by any other means".

[25] In October 2013, a group of Orthodox historians and activists, led by Vassili Boiko-Veliki, an apologist and supporter of the canonization of Tsar Ivan, addressed the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky to ask him to remove the canvas from the Tretyakov Gallery on the grounds it offends the patriotic feelings of Russians.

The painting suffered serious damage; it was pierced in three places in the central part of the work, which depicts the figure of the tsarevich.

The Tsarevich died in 1581 in the Alexandrov Kremlin, the residence of Tsar Ivan the Terrible from 1564 to 1581, and the centre of his oprichnina and de facto capital of the Russia.

One of these sources, the Mazurin chronicle [ru], reports the following:[36] In the summer of 1581, it was from the Sovereign Emperor and Grand Prince Ivan Vassilievitch, that his son, his greatness Prince Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, shining with wise meaning and grace and separated from the branch of life by a blade, received evil, and from this evil, he died.

The diary of the dyak (clerk) Ivan Timofeev [ru] says; "some say (of the Tsarevich) that his life was extinguished because of blows by the hands of his father, after trying to prevent him from committing an ugly act".

[37] Contemporaneous foreign sources are more eloquent; Jacques Margeret, a French mercenary captain in service in Russia, wrote; "there is a rumour that he (the tsar) killed the eldest (son) with his own hand, which wasn't the case, because, although he struck him with the end of the rod and he was wounded by a blow, he did not die from this, but some time later, on a pilgrimage journey".

According to him, in November 1581 in the Alexandrov Kremlin, Ivan the Terrible found his daughter-in-law Helen lying on a bench in undergarments.

Boris Godunov wanted to come to his aid but the Tsar inflicted several wounds to him with the point of his sceptre and struck the Tsarevich with it on the head.

Paling with fear, trembling, in complete shock, he exclaimed "I killed my son" and he threw himself down to kiss him; pouring out the blood flowing from a deep wound, he wept, sobbed, called for the doctors.