Parsuna Portrait of Tsar Fyodor I

A parsuna is an early Russian portrait whose painting technique still stays close to the icon. This parsuna was painted in tempera on a wooden panel in Moscow at the beginning of the 17th century. It depicts Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, shown bust-length in a robe with a high collar embroidered with pearls and stones. The inscription above the portrait calls him the "right-believing tsar".

Fyodor Ioannovich (1557–1598) was the third son of Ivan the Terrible and Tsaritsa Anastasia Romanovna, tsar from 1584 and the last member of the Moscow branch of the Rurik dynasty. For most of his reign state affairs were in fact directed by the tsar's brother-in-law Boris Godunov. Under Fyodor, in 1589, the Moscow Patriarchate was established. The Russian Orthodox Church venerates him as a saint, a right-believing tsar.

Likeness in a parsuna was conveyed in a conventional way, so attributes and an inscription helped to identify the sitter. In the second half of the 17th century parsunas were often painted in oil on canvas, though they kept the manner of icon painting.