Vrubel's painting of the swan princess interesting facts. In general order

Discipline abstract

History of world literature and art

The story about the painting by M.A. Vrubel "The Swan Princess"

Plan

1) Life time.

2) The historical nature of the era.

3) Artistic trends to which he was close.

IV. Composition and color scheme.

V. Symbolism of details.

VI. Innovation.

The Swan Princess. M. A. Vrubel (1900)

1) Vrubel M.A. (Mikhail Vrubel, 1856-1910), Russian artist, the largest representative of symbolism and modernity in Russian fine arts. Born in Omsk on March 5 (17), 1856. Vrubel studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1880–1884) under P.P. Chistyakov; I took watercolor lessons from I.E. Repin.

2) Among the Russian painters who created works on the themes of fairy tales and epics, Vrubel has a special place. The artist managed to penetrate into the very structure of poetic fiction, he managed to give a special philosophical meaning to the images of folk fantasy.

3) A wonderful painter, poet, Vrubel develops his own language, his own style, his own understanding of color with paints and lines. He seeks to bring together the elements of color harmonies. In the best of his decorative canvases, he avoids the flatness that was characteristic of the Art Nouveau decorativists. And like the best colorists of all times and peoples, Vrubel knew how to carefully distribute his colorful riches on canvas with reflections.

Like most writers, poets, and artists who worked at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, Vrubel sought to depict in his work a special world, far from the unattractive and vulgar everyday life. But, possessing a powerful gift of true talent, he did not confine himself to the realm of mystical, otherworldly symbols, like many of his contemporaries. Vrubel painfully searched for an answer to many burning questions of his time, turning to significant and majestic images, to extraordinary natures, capable of boldly challenging everything that fetters the spiritual and creative powers of a person. He was torn apart by contradictions between the ethical and the aesthetic, the divine and the human, he was tormented by eternal questions: can beauty be evil, and evil be beautiful.

The personality of Vrubel as a Russian artist explains one feature of all Russian art. This art never relies on the cold calculation of the mind. It is warmed by a living feeling. Vrubel entered the history of art as an artist of the rarest sincerity.

This picture is characteristic of Vrubel's work. It is written in the genre of mythology, in which a number of paintings were presented. Such as Demon, Pan, Bogatyr.

III. Genre.

This picture was written in the genre of mythology.

(MYTHOLOGICAL GENRE - dedicated to the events and heroes that myths tell about.)

"The Swan Princess". Deep meaning lies in just a few words. The charm of native nature, the proud and tender sincerity of a fabulous bird girl.

Arcane charms yet subjugated evil sorcery.

Loyalty and firmness of true love. Might and eternal force of good.

All these features are combined into a wonderful image, wondrous by its unfading freshness and that special majestic beauty inherent in folk tales.

IV. Composition and color scheme.

"The Swan Princess". In the very depths of your soul, the princess's wide-open charming eyes look. She seems to see everything.

Therefore, perhaps, sable eyebrows are raised so sadly and a little in surprise, lips are closed. She looks like she's about to say something, but she's silent.

The turquoise, blue, emerald semi-precious stones of the patterned crown-kokoshnik flicker, and it seems that this trembling radiance merges with the reflection of dawn on the crests of the sea waves and, with its ghostly light, seems to envelop the delicate features of a pale face, makes the rustling folds of a half-air white veil held from the breath come to life wind girl's hand.

Mother-of-pearl, pearly light is emitted by huge snow-white, but warm wings. Behind the back of the Swan Princess, the sea is worried. We can almost hear the measured sound of the surf on the rocks of the miracle island, shining with crimson, scarlet friendly magical lights.

Far, far away, at the very edge of the sea, where it meets the sky, the rays of the sun broke through the gray clouds and lit up the pink edge of the evening dawn. . .

This magical flicker of pearls and precious stones, the trembling of dawn and the glare of the flames of the island's lights creates that fabulous atmosphere that permeates the picture, makes it possible to feel the harmony of high poetry that sounds in a folk legend. Incredible goodness is poured into the canvas.

Maybe sometimes only the slight rustle of wings and the splash of waves break the silence. But how much hidden song in this silence. There is no action, no gesture in the picture. Peace reigns.

Everything seems to be enchanted. But you hear, you hear the living heartbeat of the Russian fairy tale, you are as if captivated by the gaze of the princess and ready to endlessly look into her sad kind eyes, admire her charming, sweet face, beautiful and mysterious.

The artist captivated us with the magic of his magical muse.

V. Symbolism of details.

The symbol is formed on the skeleton of numerous meanings, so it deepens its content and so it carries in itself not only the idea of ​​one work, but of the whole work. "The Swan Princess" opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. This is no coincidence. Art Nouveau is characterized by the use of such images that exist in culture as symbols, denoting any "eternal" ideas. They are often used by artists and after each use, their meaning deepens, the content is filled with the thoughts that the authors put into them. Vrubel has a certain connection between the characters in his paintings. Together, they can form a kind of myth, that picture of the world that will reflect the artist's perception of reality. Vrubel's images are always on the verge of the real world and fantasy, as it was with the inner world of the artist. He has human loyalty, the purity of love can be represented in the guise of Ophelia, the Swan Princess.

For example, the image of the Swan, the winged princess, the bride, is created on the basis of pearl color, which combines the mystery of the "living stone" with the sparkle of stars and snow. Speaking about the three main symbols of Vrubel's color, it can be noted that red, blue, yellow are three absolutely pure colors in painting, also called the main ones, because the spectrum is based on them. They cannot be created by mixing other colors, just like white.

"The Swan Princess" we see only a white bird, turned into a beautiful princess, against the backdrop of a dark seascape. But in the quivering movement of her figure, in the anxious turn of her head and the depth of her gaze, there is the tragedy of Vrubel's worldview, the loneliness and defenselessness of beauty, its sacrifice and fragility. In the eyes of the princess - knowledge of her fate and everything around.

The heroine of the canvas "The Swan Princess" is immersed in mystery and darkness.

VI. Innovation.

Vrubel was in many ways an innovator for his time. The artist breaks with the academic principles of the fine arts of the 19th century: the indispensable depiction of movement and the presence of intrigue. In the work "The Swan Princess" (1900), Vrubel found a capacious display of the Russian theme.

Application

LITERARY SOURCES

1. Suzdalev P.K. Vrubel. Personality. Worldview, method. M., 1992

2. website: www.studzona.com

3. http://vrubel.narod.ru

Picture painted: 1900
Canvas, oil.
Size: 142.5 × 93.5 cm

Description of the painting "The Swan Princess" by M. Vrubel

Artist: Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel
Name of the painting: "The Swan Princess"
Picture painted: 1900
Canvas, oil.
Size: 142.5 × 93.5 cm

The mysticism of M. Vrubel has long been a generally accepted fact, given all his demons. The artist seemed to be attracted by otherworldly forces. Fairy tales were no exception, and not folk, but literary ones.

He created their unsteady, fantastic and not everyone understandable world. The origins of this are in the education of the painter. He was fond of music, theater and opera. After meeting Nadezhda Zabela, he discovered the world of theatrical scenery and sketches of stage costumes for his wife. They impressed the audience and critics so much that they expected not so much the premiere of the performance as they came to see the costumes of the opera singer with their own eyes.

The wife became a muse for portraits, and Vrubel was in love with her voice, with the image created by the woman, with what the imagination so helpfully suggested. In 1900, the composer N. Rimsky-Korsakov presented the opera The Swan Princess to the Moscow public. Vrubel worked on sketches of costumes for actors, and Nadezhda Zabela performed the part of the Princess. The artist himself, as you know, idolized his wife and lived for her, attended all the rehearsals, sat at night over the scenery and costumes, and painted countless times. Inspired by the music and the beauty of the fairy-tale heroine, the master created the painting “The Swan Princess”, for which his wife served as a prototype.

The picture is striking in its static character. You will not see a lively play of chiaroscuro here, you will only feel a vague anxiety. Frozen water and inanimate lights of a distant city, the huge eyes of a pale-skinned girl evoke memories of those mysterious and fatal women, because of which men do not sleep at night and leave their families.

If we draw a parallel between the demons and the Swan Princess, many will say with confidence that she is a demoness. According to the opera and fairy tale, this girl helps Guidon. But before the connoisseurs of culture, the question involuntarily arises: “Why did the kite want to kill her?”. She was a sorceress, a sorceress, that is, she had a direct connection with the other world. And yet not the viewer, not the reader does not know where this stranger came from in crystal white clothes and a luxurious kokoshnik. The origin of all the heroes of Pushkin's fairy tale is precisely known, and it only "... floats on top of flowing waters."

The second association is Aphrodite, born from the waters and a line from Tsvetaev's "I am the mortal foam of the sea." The Swan Princess appeared from the sea, in which, according to the list of myths and legends, beautiful maidens with a bewitching voice and bottomless eyes lived, and in order to get out of the abyss, they turned into beautiful white birds.

The eyes of Vrubel's heroine are a separate conversation. They chain to themselves and do not let go, they are similar to the gaze of a creature from another universe. They are scary and at the same time mysterious, and this mystery is so wild and pristine that it simply cannot be explained.

The girl depicted in the picture is quite difficult to call beautiful according to standard canons. But in her pale skin, dark hair and fragile long fingers there is definitely magic and attractiveness for the stronger sex. Prince Gvidon could not resist the Swan.

The mysterious princess occupies the entire composition of the picture. Her outfit is white with hints of silver, so light that they are almost invisible. Moreover, the color of the dress and wings is not soft and cheerful, but crystalline with shades of blue - so amazingly cold and inanimate that you involuntarily think about the Snow Queen.

In the background of the canvas on the left side are the lights of the miracle island. Waves beat against its rocks, as if luring to itself. It is impossible to make out the houses and the prince's castle, because in the picture there are only highlights of red, orange and yellow - the only bright spots in the whole composition. They symbolize life, and also the passion that the Princess's gaze hides. The island is washed by the waters of a deep blue sea, so dark that it seems as if it is about to “boil, raise a howl”, merging with the dark blue, crimson and gloomy sky. A narrow strip of light in the distance seems to indicate that there is something human in the appearance of the Swan - she was able to fall in love.

The entire background of the canvas is filled with deepening twilight. This is the farewell of night and day, the most mysterious time of the day. Twilight darkness covers the wonderful island, the sea surface and the Princess herself. The same mystery begins - the transformation. You see snow-white swan wings, which in a split second will become sea foam, and the transformation itself seems endless. The reality of Vrubel's painting is so distorted that it seems that some demonic forces have stopped time. First of all, this is manifested in the clothes of the Swans. Luxurious kokoshnik, decorated with intricate patterns, white and blue stones - everything shines like pagan jewelry. The dress of the demonic beauty is white, the colors of innocence and purity, and also of infinity and cold, somewhat reminiscent of a wedding dress. Perhaps the artist conveyed the moment when the Princess was supposed to reveal herself to Gvidon.

Therefore, the mystical girl does not approach the viewer, she leaves him towards her happiness, like Blok's stranger. She looks half-turned at you, as if warning that not everyone can pacify demons.

The picture is made in the painter's favorite technique - all the same clear features of the face, limbs and details, the play of shadows, giving them volume, and the rest - rough strokes with a palette knife, cleaned with a knife.

They say Vrubel went crazy painting demons. Was the Swan Princess one of them? Critics, art historians, and the descendants of the artist himself are looking for an answer to this question and have not found it to this day.

They say that art therapy is Vrubel's invention. Drawing his demons and demonesses, he could control his shaky psyche. Psychiatrists who examined the artist's paintings came to the conclusion that there were improvements in his condition when he painted and flashes when he just conceived a picture.

They say that the artist, faithful to his wife, was seduced. And it is true. He was seduced by that unknown and elusive, mystical and dangerous power of art, which he only wanted to stop for a moment in the painting “The Swan Princess”. It turned out to be stopped for eternity.

“... You are the bright star of the mysterious world,
Where do I ascend from the narrowness of the earth,
Where the tuned lyre awaits me,
Where the dreams warmed by you are waiting for me ... "

Pyotr Vyazemsky

All fairy-tale folklore stories about the transformation of a person into a Swan, including the classic Russian image of the Swan Princess, date back to the Hyperborean tradition.

The sea deity Forkiy, the son of Gaia-Earth and the prototype of the Russian Sea Tsar, was married to the Titanide Keto. Their six daughters, who were born within the Hyperborean borders, were originally revered as beautiful Swan maidens. Prometheus, in the great tragedy of Aeschylus, spoke about the Forkids, like the Swans, living on the edge of the earth, shrouded in eternal night.

Fairy-tale creatures, according to legend, as befits Swan maidens, often appear by the river, shed their swan plumage and splash in the cool water. Swan maidens, throwing off their swan robes, turn into magical beauties.

The image of the Swan, the Swan-Man and swan symbolism runs through the entire history of the culture of the peoples of Eurasia: from the ancient ladle in the form of a Swan, found during excavations of a primitive site (III-II millennium BC) in the Middle Urals and petroglyphs of Lake Onega to tender ancient goddesses with swan wings. Winged maidens with stylized plumage are also found on Russian embroideries.

The Swan Maiden (Leda, Lada) is an ancient and comprehensive image. The plot of a person's marriage to a Swan or turning into a Swan is common among many peoples; it is also reflected in a number of folklore images, incl. The Swan Princess.

And Pushkin, with some incomprehensible instinct, caught the true, divine nature of the Swan from the fairy tale told to him by Arina Rodionovna. The poet was looking for the main line of events, which then so freely connected all his thoughts. In the first version, magical transformations and other miracles occur thanks to the Queen Mother. In the final - they are created by the Swan Princess. The main mystery and miracle is that in his long journey to this amazing insight, the poet came close to the ancient folk origins of the image of the divine Swan. A portrait-description of the eternally young goddess, as the young prince Gvidon saw her:

Here she flaps her wings
Flew over the waves
And to the shore from above
Dropped into the bushes.
Startled, shaken off
And the princess turned around:
The moon shines under the scythe,
And in the forehead a star burns;
And she is majestic
Acts like a pava;
And as the speech says,
Like a river murmurs.

Perhaps the most unusual and attractive female image is The Swan Princess, a painting by Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel, written on the basis of the stage image of the heroine of the opera by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” based on the plot of the fairy tale of the same name by A. S. Pushkin . The party of the Swan Princess was sung by his wife N. I. Zabela-Vrubel. The princess from Vrubel's canvas is mysterious and enigmatic, her face is sad. The Swan Princess is depicted against the background of twilight descending over the sea, a narrow strip of sunset on the horizon and a distant city.

In the gathering twilight with a crimson streak of sunset, the princess swims away into the darkness, and only turned around for the last time to make a farewell flap of her wings.

Aria of the Swan Princess from Rimsky-Korsakov's opera

There is something mysterious and disturbing in this work of the artist - it is not without reason that The Swan Princess was Alexander Blok's favorite painting.

A train splattered with stars
Blue, blue, blue eyes.
Between earth and heaven
Whirlwind raised fire.

Life and death in eternal whirling,
All - in tight silks -
You are open to the milky ways,
Hidden in storm clouds.

Stuffy fogs fell.
Turn off, turn off the light, pour the darkness ...
You - with a narrow, white, strange hand
She gave me a torch cup in my hands.

I'll throw a torch cup into the blue dome -
The milky way will spread.
You alone will rise above the whole desert
Expand the comet plume.

Let the silver touch the folds
With an indifferent heart to know
How sweet my suffering path is,
How easy and clear to die.

1906

The charm of native nature, the proud and tender sincerity of a fabulous bird girl. Arcane charms yet subjugated evil sorcery. Loyalty and firmness of true love. Might and eternal force of good. All these features are combined into a wonderful image, wondrous by its unfading freshness and that special majestic beauty inherent in folk tales.

“... You are the bright star of the mysterious world,
Where do I ascend from the narrowness of the earth,
Where the tuned lyre awaits me,
Where the dreams warmed by you are waiting for me ... "

Pyotr Vyazemsky

All fairy-tale folklore stories about the transformation of a person into a Swan, including the classic Russian image of the Swan Princess, date back to the Hyperborean tradition.

The sea deity Forkiy, the son of Gaia-Earth and the prototype of the Russian Sea Tsar, was married to the Titanide Keto. Their six daughters, who were born within the Hyperborean borders, were originally revered as beautiful Swan maidens. Prometheus, in the great tragedy of Aeschylus, spoke about the Forkids, like the Swans, living on the edge of the earth, shrouded in eternal night.

Fairy-tale creatures, according to legend, as befits Swan maidens, often appear by the river, shed their swan plumage and splash in the cool water. Swan maidens, throwing off their swan robes, turn into magical beauties.
The image of the Swan, the Swan-Man and swan symbolism runs through the entire history of the culture of the peoples of Eurasia: from the ancient ladle in the form of a Swan, found during excavations of a primitive site (III-II millennium BC) in the Middle Urals and petroglyphs of Lake Onega to tender ancient goddesses with swan wings. Winged maidens with stylized plumage are also found on Russian embroideries.

The Swan Maiden (Leda, Lada) is an ancient and comprehensive image. The plot of a person's marriage to a Swan or turning into a Swan is common among many peoples; it is also reflected in a number of folklore images, incl. The Swan Princess.

And Pushkin, with some incomprehensible instinct, caught the true, divine nature of the Swan from the fairy tale told to him by Arina Rodionovna. The poet was looking for the main line of events, which then so freely connected all his thoughts. In the first version, magical transformations and other miracles occur thanks to the Queen Mother. In the final - they are created by the Swan Princess. The main mystery and miracle is that in his long journey to this amazing insight, the poet came close to the ancient folk origins of the image of the divine Swan. A portrait-description of the eternally young goddess, as the young prince Gvidon saw her:

Here she flaps her wings
Flew over the waves
And to the shore from above
Dropped into the bushes.
Startled, shaken off
And the princess turned around:
The moon shines under the scythe,
And in the forehead a star burns;
And she is majestic
Acts like a pava;
And as the speech says,
Like a river murmurs.

Perhaps the most unusual and attractive female image is The Swan Princess, a painting by Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel, written on the basis of the stage image of the heroine of the opera by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” based on the plot of the fairy tale of the same name by A. S. Pushkin . The party of the Swan Princess was sung by his wife N. I. Zabela-Vrubel. The princess from Vrubel's canvas is mysterious and enigmatic, her face is sad. The Swan Princess is depicted against the background of twilight descending over the sea, a narrow strip of sunset on the horizon and a distant city.
In the gathering twilight with a crimson streak of sunset, the princess swims away into the darkness, and only turned around for the last time to make a farewell flap of her wings.

Aria of the Swan Princess from Rimsky-Korsakov's opera

1900
There is something mysterious and disturbing in this work of the artist - it is not without reason that The Swan Princess was Alexander Blok's favorite painting.

* * *
A train splattered with stars
Blue, blue, blue eyes.
Between earth and heaven
Whirlwind raised fire.

Life and death in eternal whirling,
All - in tight silks -
You are open to the milky ways,
Hidden in storm clouds.

Stuffy fogs fell.
Turn off, turn off the light, pour the darkness ...
You - with a narrow, white, strange hand
She gave me a torch cup in my hands.

I'll throw a torch cup into the blue dome -
The milky way will spread.
You alone will rise above the whole desert
Expand the comet plume.

Let the silver touch the folds
With an indifferent heart to know
How sweet my suffering path is,
How easy and clear to die.

1906

The charm of native nature, the proud and tender sincerity of a fabulous bird girl. Arcane charms yet subjugated evil sorcery. Loyalty and firmness of true love. Might and eternal force of good. All these features are combined into a wonderful image, wondrous by its unfading freshness and that special majestic beauty inherent in folk tales.

Passionate love for nature helps the artist to convey its beauty. The lush clusters of Vrubel's "Lilacs" (1900, State Tretyakov Gallery), flashing with purple fire, live, breathe, and smell fragrant in the radiance of a starry night. One of Vrubel's contemporaries wrote: "Nature blinded him ... because he peered too closely into her secrets."

Along with epic themes, Vrubel has been working on the image of the Demon throughout the 90s. In one of the letters to his father, the artist's idea of ​​​​the Demon is expressed: " The demon is not so much an evil spirit as a suffering and mournful one, with all this a domineering, majestic spirit". The first attempt to solve this topic dates back to 1885, but the work was destroyed by Vrubel.

In the painting "Seated Demon" (1890, State Tretyakov Gallery), a young titan is depicted in the rays of sunset on top of a rock. The powerful beautiful body does not seem to fit in the frame, the hands are wrinkled, the face is touchingly beautiful, inhuman sorrow in the eyes. Vrubel's "Demon" is a combination of contradictions: beauty, grandeur, strength and at the same time stiffness, helplessness, melancholy; he is surrounded by a fabulously beautiful, but petrified, cold world. There are contrasts in the coloring of the picture. Cold lilac color "fights" with warm orange-gold. Rocks, flowers, the figure are painted in a special way, in Vrubel's way: the artist, as it were, cuts the form into separate facets and it seems that the world is woven from blocks of jewels. There is a feeling of originality.

Thinking in fantastic images, Vrubel is closely connected with the surrounding life, his Demon is deeply modern, it reflected not only the artist’s personal emotional experiences, but the era itself with its contrasts and contradictions. As wrote A. Blok : "Vrubel's demon is a symbol of our time, neither night nor day, neither darkness nor light".

In 1891, for the anniversary edition of his works Lermontov under the editorship of Konchalovsky, Vrubel completed the illustrations, of the thirty - half belonged to the "Demon". These illustrations, in essence, represent independent works, significant in the history of Russian book graphics, and testify to Vrubel's deep understanding of Lermontov's poetry. Especially noteworthy is the watercolor "Demon's Head". She is truly monumental. Against the background of stony snow-capped peaks - a head with a hat of black curls. A pale face, parched, as if scorched by internal fire, lips, burning eyes with a piercing gaze, with an expression of unbearable torment. In this look - the thirst for "knowledge and freedom", the rebellious spirit of doubt.

A few years later, Vrubel wrote The Flying Demon (1899, Russian Museum). The image is permeated with a premonition of death, doom. The color of the picture is gloomy.

And, finally, the last painting, "The Downcast Demon", belongs to the years 1901-1902, Vrubel worked hard and painfully on it. A. Benois recalls that the picture was already at the World of Art exhibition, and Vrubel still continued to rewrite the face of the Demon, changing color.

The broken, deformed body of the Demon with broken wings is stretched out in the gorge, eyes burn with anger. The world plunges into dusk, the last ray flashes on the crown of the Demon, on the tops of the mountains. The rebellious spirit is overthrown, but not broken.

Contemporaries saw in this image a protesting beginning, a beautiful unsubdued person. Words come to mind A. Blok : "What instant impotence! Time is a light smoke! We will spread our wings again! We will fly away again! .." and said a little later Chaliapin : "And he wrote his Demons! Strong, scary, creepy and irresistible ... My Demon is from Vrubel."

Finishing the defeated Demon, Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel fell seriously ill and was placed in a hospital. With short breaks, the disease lasts until 1904, then a short recovery occurs.

In 1904 he goes to Petersburg. The last period of creativity begins.

In 1904, Vrubel wrote "Six-winged Seraphim", according to the plan associated with Pushkin's poem "Prophet". A mighty angel in a sparkling iridescent plumage to a certain extent continues the theme of the Demon, but this image is notable for its integrity and harmony.

In the last years of his life, Vrubel created one of the most delicate, fragile images - "Portrait of N. I. Zabela against the backdrop of birch trees" (1904, Russian Museum). Interesting self-portraits belong to the same period. Since 1905, the artist has been in the hospital constantly, but continues to work, showing himself as a brilliant draftsman. He paints scenes of hospital life, portraits of doctors, landscapes. Drawings made in a different manner are distinguished by accurate observation, great emotionality. Dr. Usoltsev, who treated Vrubel, writes: " He was a creative artist with all his being, down to the deepest recesses of his psychic personality. He always created, one might say, continuously, and creativity was for him as "easy and as necessary as breathing. While a person is alive, he breathes everything, while Vrubel breathed - he created everything".

A few years before his death, Vrubel began to work on a portrait V. Bryusova (1906, Russian Museum). Some time later, Bryusov wrote that all his life he tried to be like this portrait. Vrubel did not have time to complete this work, in 1906 the artist went blind. He tragically experiences a terrible blow, in a difficult hospital situation he dreams of the blue of the sky above the dark fields, of the mother-of-pearl colors of spring. Music was the only consolation. Vrubel died on April 1, 1910.

Creating tragic images, the artist embodied in them a bright noble beginning. The struggle between light and darkness is the content of most of Vrubel's works. A. Blok poetically said this over the artist's grave: " Vrubel came to us as a messenger that the gold of a clear evening is interspersed in the lilac night. He left us his Demons as spellcasters against purple evil, against the night. Before Vrubel and his ilk reveal to humanity once a century, I can only tremble"

Materials of the article by Fedorova N.A. from the book: Dmitrienko A.F., Kuznetsova E.V., Petrova O.F., Fedorova N.A. 50 short biographies of masters of Russian art. Leningrad, 1971

Monograph about Vrubel. Unnoticed Masterpieces

Girl on the background persian carpet, 1886

A trip to Venice was undertaken to paint commissioned iconostasis images - Christ, the Mother of God and saints - Cyril and Athanasius. Prakhov decided that it would be better for Vrubel to work on them not in Kyiv, but in Venice, a museum city, where the Cathedral of St. Mark with its famous mosaics, the 12th-century mosaics at Torcello and paintings by renowned Venetian colorists.
Vrubel spent about six months in Venice. From there he wrote to his sister: “I leaf through my Venice (in which I sit all the time, because the order is on heavy zinc boards that you can’t roll with) as a useful special book, and not as poetic fiction. What I find in it is interesting only to my palette.” Most of all, his palette was not luminaries of the High Renaissance - Titian, Veronese - but their predecessors, the Quattrocento masters (XV century), more closely associated with the medieval tradition - Carpaccio, Cima da Conegliano and, especially, Giovanni Bellini. The influence of the Venetian Quattrocento was reflected in Vrubel's monumental icons with full-length figures. The first biographer of Vrubel A.P. Ivanov wrote about them: “The plastic music of these icons is built in the majestic and clear modes of G. Bellini and Carpaccio, and in the depths of it, as a dominant in the organ point, the colorful magic of the San Marco mosaics sounds.”
Venice gave Vrubel a lot and became an important milestone in his creative development: if the meeting with Byzantine art enriched his understanding of form and elevated his expression, then Venetian painting awakened a coloristic gift. Yet he eagerly waited for the return. What happened to him was what often happens to people who find themselves outside their homeland for a long time: only then do they feel all the power of its attraction. A letter from the artist from Venice to his comrade at the Academy, V.E. Savinsky, has been preserved, where he, with obvious tension of thought, is trying to present new and important conclusions for him, which he came to in Italy. He says that here, that is, in Italy, one can study, and create - only on native soil; that to create is to feel, and to feel is to “forget that you are an artist and rejoice in the fact that you are, first of all, a person.” "... How much beauty we have in Rus'!" - such an exclamation breaks out from Vrubel for the first time. Previously, he seemed to be rather indifferent to the “native soil”: it was something taken for granted, unnoticed, plans were scooped from world sources: antiquity, Hamlet, Faust ... And only now, abroad, does his mood arise and thoughts that later led to a poetic interpretation of Russian fairy tales and Russian nature.

There was another reason why Vrubel wanted to return to Kyiv as soon as possible. He was in love with Prakhov's wife Emilia Lvovna, about which several times, without naming a name, he mysteriously hinted in letters to his sister: this was his secret "spiritual affair."
Even before leaving abroad, he painted E. L. Prakhova several times - her face served him as a prototype for the face of the Mother of God. The portrait resemblance is also preserved in the icon itself, but it is muted there; more clearly - in two pencil sketches of the head of the Mother of God. An amazing face looks from these drawings: rather ugly than beautiful, the infinitely touching face of the wanderer - the brows up to the eyebrows, a swollen mouth, as it were, wide round bright eyes, as if contemplating something unknown to others.
Of the four iconostasis images of the Mother of God, the artist especially succeeded. This is one of his undoubted masterpieces. It is written on a golden background, dressed in deep, velvety dark red tones, the pillow on the throne is embroidered with pearls, and at the foot are delicate white roses. The Mother of God holds the baby on her knees, but does not lean towards him, but sits upright and looks in front of her with a sad prophetic look. Some resemblance to the type of Russian peasant woman flashes in the features and expression of her face, like those long-suffering female faces that are found in Surikov's paintings.
For the first time felt love for the motherland, the first sublime love for a woman spiritualized this image, brought it closer to the human heart.
Returning from Venice, Vrubel rushed about. It was as if he could not find a place for himself - either he made a decision to leave Kyiv (and indeed he left for Odessa for several months), then he returned again; he was drawn to the drunken “cup of life”, he was violently fond of some visiting dancer, drank a lot, lived unsettled, feverishly, and besides, he was severely in poverty, since there was no money, while relations with Prakhov became colder and more distant .
The artist's father was in alarm: his son was already thirty years old, university education, art education, "an abyss of talent", and meanwhile no name, no secure position - no stake, no court. On insistent invitations to come and live at home (the family lived then in Kharkov) does not answer anything. In the autumn of 1886, A.M. Vrubel himself came to Kyiv to visit his son, and his fears were confirmed: “Misha is healthy (according to him), but he looks thin and pale. From the station I went straight to him and was saddened by his room and furnishings. Imagine, not a single table, not a single chair. All furnishings are two simple stools and a bed. I didn’t see a warm blanket, a warm coat, or a dress, except for the one he was wearing (a greasy frock coat and worn trousers). Maybe in a mortgage ... It hurts, bitterly to tears ... I was to see all this. There are so many brilliant hopes!”

There is no direct evidence of the artist's state of mind at that time - he did not like to be frank - but it is quite obvious that he was going through not only a financial crisis. He endured poverty carelessly, the lack of fame too: he knew that sooner or later she would come, and if she didn’t come, so what? Love that has come to a standstill - that was serious. But not only that. He was visited by deep turmoil, which he shared with his era, although the immediate causes may have been intimate and personal. Vrubel experienced early what two decades later Blok called "an influx of purple worlds," purple darkness overcoming the golden light. An atheistic rebellion arose in him. For two years, Vrubel worked for the church, in an atmosphere of religiosity, which was as little in agreement with those around him, as the secular lady Emilia Prakhova was so little in line with the ideal of the Mother of God. And for the first time, the gloomy image of the God-fighter - the Demon - began to tempt Vrubel and capture his imagination.
He was just working on The Demon when his father unexpectedly arrived. The father described the unfinished painting in the same letter, saying that the Demon seemed to him "an evil, sensual, repulsive old woman." No traces of the Kyiv "Demon" have come down to us - the artist destroyed it, all the now known "Demons" were made much later. But the idea and the beginning belong to the Kyiv period.
At the same time, Vrubel worked on other things then, commissioned by the Kyiv philanthropist I.N. Tereshchenko. They discover a craving for the east - flowery, magical, spicy. For Tereshchenko, Vrubel undertook to paint the painting "Oriental Tale", but he only made a sketch in watercolor, and he tore it up when E.L. Prakhova refused to accept it as a gift. Then, however, he glued the torn sheet, which to this day is the pride of the Kyiv Museum of Russian Art. This large watercolor is amazing. At first glance, it is difficult to make out what is depicted: the eye is blinded by an iridescent mosaic of precious particles, illuminated by flashes of bluish phosphoric light, as if we really entered the cave, the treasures from the Thousand and One Nights. But now the eye gets used to it and begins to distinguish the inside of the tent of the Persian prince, the carpets covering it, the prince himself and his odalisques. The figures are full of feeling and poetry: the prince, having risen on the couch, with a thoughtful and heavy gaze, looks at the beautiful girl standing in front of him with lowered eyes.

Monograph about Vrubel. Kyiv. Encounter with antiquity

Girl on the background persian carpet, 1886

The artist L. Kovalsky, at that time a student of the Kyiv drawing school, later told how he first met Vrubel shortly after his arrival in Kyiv. Kovalsky settled down to write a sketch on a high hill overlooking the Dnieper and distant meadows. “The silence of the evening, the complete absence of anyone, except for the swallows, which circled and chirped in the air. In calm contemplation, I depicted, as best I could, my 30-verst landscape, but quiet steps, and then a fixed look made me turn around. The spectacle was more than extraordinary: against the backdrop of the primitive hills of Kirillovsky, behind me stood a blond, almost white, blond, young, with a very characteristic head, a small mustache, also almost white. Short in stature, very well-proportioned, dressed ... it was this that at that time could strike me most of all ... all in a black velvet suit, in stockings, short trousers and boots. No one dressed like that in Kyiv, and this made a proper impression on me. In general, it was a young Venetian from a painting by Tintoretto or Titian, but I learned this many years later, when I was in Venice. Now, against the background of the Kirillov hills and the colossal dome of the blue of the Kiev sky, the appearance of this contrasting figure, with blond hair, dressed in black velvet, was more than an incomprehensible anachronism.
... The stranger leaned closer, looked intently and in a serious tone, as if a thing of unknown importance, said: “Where is your first plan? Is it these bales of hay? Why, they are several miles away! You can’t write like that, you are doing nonsense - you need to start studying nature from a sheet, from details, and not, like you, take all sorts of things and stuff them on an insignificant piece - this is some kind of encyclopedia, not painting. Don't be angry, I said that because I see your mistake." Looked a little more and disappeared; I didn’t even turn around to look, I was hurt by insulting words, which seemed to me a lot in his remark, but I was still interested that he spoke so sincerely and seriously about my work, which I looked at as a thing not worthy of attention - I was taught to do this at school, there no one seriously looked at either their own or other people's work.

Excited, Kovalsky did not continue the study and went to the St. Cyril's Church to see his comrades who were working on the restoration of frescoes. In the choir stalls, he noticed a stranger he had just met; the comrades said that this was the artist Vrubel, and showed the “Descent of the Holy Spirit” he had begun, as well as two angels: “Vrubel said that here he came closest to Byzantium.”
So, Vrubel in Kyiv had to supervise the restoration of Byzantine frescoes of the XII century in the St. Cyril's Church, in addition, write several new figures and compositions on its walls to replace the lost ones, and also paint images for the iconostasis. The overall management of the work belonged to Prakhov.
A.V. Prakhov, in close contact with whom (and with his family) Vrubel spent five years in Kyiv, was known in artistic circles. An art historian, archaeologist, professor at St. Petersburg University, in the 1970s he also actively acted as an art critic in the Bee magazine. In articles under the pseudonym "Profan", Prakhov, with great literary brilliance and temperament, promoted the art of the Wanderers. One of his most interesting articles, dedicated to the Sixth Traveling Exhibition of 1878 (in fact, two exhibits - Yaroshenko's "Stoker" and Repin's "Protodeacon") was not passed by censorship. The article was preserved in proofs, and later, even today, its authorship was at one time erroneously attributed to I.N. Kramskoy. Then Prakhov completely withdrew from critical activity, ceased to engage in contemporary art (a characteristic symptom of the 80s!) and returned to the study of antiquities. However, he did not lose touch with the artists, and his house in Kyiv was almost as open to them as the houses of Polenov and Mamontov in Moscow. Energetic, active, not yet forty years old, Prakhov stirred up the artistic life of Kyiv, undertaking the study and restoration of unique monuments of Kievan Rus. He also supervised the interior decoration of the new temple - Vladimir, founded in the 1860s. At that time, Russian artists had rather rough ideas about the Byzantine style, as well as about the restoration technique. The Kirillov frescoes were in poor condition, and an artel of students from the Kyiv drawing school, led by the artist N.I. Murashko (Vrubel later became close friends with him), worked on their “renovation”. With their little skillful hands, the frescoes were painted from above along the preserved contours (according to the “counts”); now such a method would be considered barbaric. Information has been preserved that Vrubel objected to him, offering to simply clear the frescoes and leave them intact, but they did not agree to this: the temple was active, and the half-erased figures of the saints could confuse the parishioners. It was necessary to finish them, keeping, if possible, the style of the XII century. How was it to be saved? Not only Murashko's students, but also Vrubel himself first encountered Byzantine art in Kyiv. For several months he plunged headlong into the study of antiquities, using, in addition to the originals of St. Cyril's Church and the Cathedral of St. Sophia, books, color tables and photographs from the rich library of Prakhov. He treated the restoration of old frescoes from surviving fragments with great care; as N. A. Prakhov (son of A.V. Prakhov), “did not invent anything from himself, but studied the setting of figures and the folds of clothes based on materials preserved in other places.”
Now, in the middle of the 20th rather than the 19th century, the Kirillov frescoes have been restored according to all the rules of modern science, although most of them have been irretrievably lost, and only a few pieces of the ancient painting have been preserved intact. But now St. Cyril's Church has also gone down in history as a monument depicted by Vrubel's genius. Vrubel painted several figures of angels on the walls, the head of Christ, the head of Moses and, finally, two independent compositions - a huge “Descent of the Holy Spirit” in the choirs and “Lamentation” in the porch. In working on them, the artist no longer copied old samples. He had an inner right not to follow the letter of the ancient style - he penetrated into its spirit.

The noble and restrained expression of ancient mosaics and frescoes clarified Vrubel's own searches. Expression was characteristic of his talent from the beginning, but in his early works he strayed into exaggeration and romantic clichés. So, in the drawing "Anna Karenina's Appointment with her son", made in the early 80s, Anna, with exaggerated ardor, almost strangles a child in her arms. In the drawings for "Mozart and Salieri" (1884), Salieri looks like a melodramatic villain. And only after joining the monumental Byzantine and Old Russian art, Vrubel's expression becomes majestic - psychological pressure disappears, a characteristically Vrubel expression of spiritual tension appears in the concentrated gaze of huge eyes (big eyes are also a feature of Byzantine painting), with postures as if numb, a mean gesture, in atmosphere of deep silence. This is already in the "Descent of the Holy Spirit", written on the box vault of St. Cyril's Church. According to the gospel tradition, the holy spirit appeared to the apostles in the form of a dove, the flames emanating from it "rested on each of them." After that, the apostles acquired the gift of speaking in all languages ​​and preaching the teachings of Christ to all nations. Like other gospel tales, the plot of the "Descent" had its own iconographic scheme in church art, fixed by a centuries-old tradition. Vrubel followed the scheme quite closely, apparently using miniatures of the old gospels. But in the interpretation of figures and faces, he showed himself as a modern artist, as a psychologist. His apostles had living prototypes. It used to be thought that the artist made preparatory sketches from the mentally ill (the St. Cyril's Church was located on the territory of a psychiatric hospital), but this is not true: the son of A.V. Prakhov N.A. , priests, archaeologists, among them Adrian Viktorovich Prakhov himself.
continuation ....

Mikhail Vrubel. Gallery of pictures. Painting

Demon defeated. 1901	Seated Demon, 1890. Sketch	Demon defeated. 1902	Flying Demon. 1899
Lady in purple. Portrait of the artist N.I. Zabela-Vrubel. 1904	Red flowers and leaves of begonias in a basket. 1886-1887	Peacock. Early 1900s	East Dance. 1887
Demon defeated. 1902. Sketch in watercolor	Portrait of K.D. Artsybushev. 1897	Six-winged seraph. 1905	Night in Italy. 1891
Bogatyr. 1898	Hamlet and Ophelia. 1884	Snow Maiden. 1890s	Rose hip. 1884
Games of naiads and newts	Farewell of the king of the sea with the princess Volkhova. 1899	Catania. Sicily. 1894	Porto Fino. Italy. 1894

Six-winged seraphim (Azrael). 1904