Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1848-1926) is the founder of a special “Russian style” within pan-European symbolism and modernity. The artist became famous for his fiery, lyrical and monumental-epic paintings on themes of Russian history, folk epics and fairy tales. He also acted as a theater artist and muralist. Vasnetsov’s creative biography is clearly divided into two large periods. In the first, he follows the principles of the peredvizhniki social-critical genre. Among the heroes of the paintings are the St. Petersburg poor, for example, a couple of impoverished old people changing their home (“From apartment to apartment”). The picture “Preference” is full of good-natured humor, ironizing the despondency of bourgeois life. The rise of public interest in national antiquities in the last decades of the 19th century led to decisive shifts in the artist’s work. Turning to themes of folk mythology, he radically reforms the Russian historical genre, combining historical realities, reproduced with archaeological accuracy, with the exciting atmosphere of legend. Among his popular paintings of this period are the paintings “After the Massacre of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsians” (based on “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”), “Alyonushka”, “Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible”. The most famous painting was “Three Heroes” with the figures of equestrian knights Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich guarding the borders of the Fatherland. The early psychological novels are being replaced by monumental epics. A number of works (“Three Princesses of the Underground Kingdom”) already bear all the characteristic features of a decorative painting-panel of the Art Nouveau style, based on the poetics of symbolism, which blurs the boundaries between fairy-tale fantasy and reality. Among Russian and foreign connoisseurs (in particular, A. A. Blok and R. M. Rilke), the work of the new, “epic” Vasnetsov finds a warm response as an expression of the “new Russian style.” Vasnetsov also proved himself to be a great master of decorative painting. His greatest achievement in the field of monumental art was the painting of the Kyiv Vladimir Cathedral. Trying to update the Byzantine canons as much as possible, the artist introduces a lyrical, personal element into religious images and frames them with folklore ornaments. The late period of the artist’s work is full of gloomy experiences. The horrors of the revolutionary terror of the beginning of the century push him into the camp of right-wing extremists of a national chauvinist bent. The paintings “The Frog Princess” and “The Battle of Dobrynya Nikitich with the seven-headed Serpent Gorynych” are full of complex allegorical overtones. The public perceived them as an expression of the master’s anxious thoughts about the impending and accomplished social catastrophe. After the revolution, he did not take an active part in artistic life, but continued to work, creating, in particular, a number of significant portraits, including an unfinished portrait of the artist M. V. Nesterov.