A bearded tsar clutches his bleeding son in a dim, richly decorated room, one hand pressed to the young man's temple, his own eyes wide with horror. Blood stains the prince's pink silk shirt and the red carpet, a long staff lies across the rug in the foreground, and a small chest with a cushion sits in the corner. The painting shows Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his son, Tsarevich Ivan, on November 16, 1581, after the tsar struck him in a quarrel. Ilya Repin followed Nikolai Karamzin's history of Russia, and the Tretyakov Gallery says the main idea is the accidental nature of the killing and the father's remorse.

Repin also tied the picture's origin to the 1881 assassination of Emperor Alexander II and the reprisals that followed. Shown at the Wanderers' exhibition in 1885, it angered government circles and was taken off display through the efforts of Konstantin Pobedonostsev; Pavel Tretyakov, who had bought it, was not allowed to show it for three months. In 1913 a man slashed the canvas with a knife, and in May 2018 another attack damaged the central part. It is in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.