ABSTRACT
At celebrations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in 1722–24 Empress Catherine I wore an Amazon outfit now preserved in the Kremlin museums (Boldov and Viadimirskaya 1995, 186). This costume on the first empress of modern Russia raises issues about the representation of the female rulers who dominated the rest of Russia's first imperial century, and how their images shaped concepts of the imperial court as an institutional reflection of evolving, Europeanized Russian society.
