In the 17th century, parsunas appeared in Russia. This was a transitional stage between icons and secular portraits. The word “parsuna” comes from the Latin word “persona”, meaning “a person”. Until the 18th century, this term was used to refer to all portraits. These images featured both traces of icon painting traditions such as flat images, iconographic canons, and static poses, and new features, such as painting from life, striving for realism, attempts to achieve a three-dimensional image, and the use of oil paints instead of tempera. Parsunas were painted on canvases, and less frequently on boards, and depicted tsars, princes, and boyars.
These were mostly images of men; female portraits were not common. The only exception was for the brides and wives of Russian tsars. For example, Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina was the daughter of boyar Kirill Poluektovich Naryshkin who was forced by the Streltsy to take monastic vows. Natalya Naryshkina was brought up in the house of her distant relative, boyar Artamon Matveev, where she met Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. They got married in 1671 when Natalya was 19 and Alexei was already over 40. This was the tsar’s second marriage.
Contemporaries described Natalya Naryshkina in the following manner,
