In this chapter we consider how Russians and in some cases foreigners have talked about, written about, and represented certain key works of Russian painting, architecture, and sculpture as signifiers of national identity. The ‘monuments’ to be discussed are not confined to what the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines as ‘a structure, edifice, or erection intended to commemorate a notable person, action or event’. They are better characterised by the Russian word pamiatnik, which has both the narrow meaning of a monument to someone or something and the wider sense of a notable or key example of visual, built, or literary culture, as in such combinations as pamiatnik kul΄tury (monument of culture) or pamiatnik zhivopisi (monument of painting). These cultural landmarks may have lasted for many centuries and be widely venerated, like the twelfth-century icon of the Vladimir Mother of God, or they may be of more recent vintage and less generally admired, but still enjoy iconic status, like Vera Mukhina's ‘Worker and Collective Farm Woman’ sculpture (1937). Some are official memorial-monuments to empire-building, such as the instantly recognisable St Basil's Cathedral on Red Square (1555–61); others are small intimate pictures like Aleksei Savrasov's ‘The Rooks Have Arrived’ (1871), which, to quote a Soviet art historian writing in the 1980s, is ‘linked in our consciousness with the discovery and affirmation of images of our native land … as a sort of symbol of Russian realistic landscape. Everyone knows it from childhood.