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Abstract
During the reign of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, a new form of icons was developed and created for members of the imperial family. Upon the birth of a prince or princess, the new child would be measured. The Tsar would then commission a likeness of their patron saint which used these measurements to determine the length of the painted panel. These icons uniformly incorporated a motif known as the Old Testament Trinity, which depicts the three angelic visitors who came to Abraham in the Book of Genesis. By considering the extant literature on this practice, their particular iconography, and their relation to other forms of Holy images, it is the purpose of this thesis to demonstrate that these icons were part of a new model of Russian autocracy, developed during the reign of Ivan IV and maintained during the reign of the Romanov dynasty and involving the process of sacralization of the ruler.