Portal:The arts/Featured picture/February, 2007



In Russian folk tales, Baba Yaga can supply Ivan the Fool or Tsarevich with a flying carpet or some other magical gifts like a ball that rolls in front of the hero showing him the way or a towel that can turn into bridge. Such gifts help the hero to find his way "beyond Thrice-Nine Lands, in the Thrice-Ten Kingdom".

In 1880, the rich industrialist Savva Mamontov commissioned Viktor Vasnetsov to illustrate the folk tale about Tsarevich Ivan and Firebird. The painting represents Ivan returning home after capturing the Firebird, which he keeps in a cage. Ivan is riding the flying carpet in the early morning mist. This work was Vasnetsov's first attempt at illustrating Russian folk tales and inaugurated a famous series of paintings on the themes drawn from Russian folklore. When exhibited at the 8th exhibition of the Peredvizhniki, the painting was panned by leading critics as a commercially motivated betrayal of realism and return to the aesthetics of Romanticism. On the other hand, it was enthusiastically received by the Slavophile artists from the Abramtsevo art colony.