Аннотация:Aleksandr Ivanov visited Alexander Herzen in London in 1857. By that year, Alexander II’s plans to abolish serfdom had been already announced, prompting Herzen to call the tsar a “liberator” in one of his articles of 1858. In this context, Ivanov’s painting "The Appearance of Christ before the People" mirrored, to some degree, the current situation, and this influenced the artist’s decision to bring the painting to Russia.