Viktor Vasnetsov
Encyclopedia
Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov ' onMouseout='HidePop("78292")' href="/topics/Kirov,_Kirov_Oblast">Vyatka
, May 15 (N.S.), 1848 — Moscow
, July 23, 1926) was a Russia
n artist
who specialized in mythological
and historical
subjects. He was described as co-founder of folklorist/romantic
modernism
in the Russian painting and a key figure of the revivalist
movement in Russian art.
Viktor Vasnetsov was born in a remote village Lopyal of Vyatka
guberniya
in 1848, the second of the six children. His father Mikhail Vasilievich Vasnetsov, a village priest, was a well-educated 'philosophy-inclined' man interested in natural science
, astronomy
and painting
. His grandfather was an icon
painter. Two of Mikhail Vasnetsov's three sons, Viktor and Apollinary
, became remarkable painters, the third one becoming a schoolteacher. It was in Lopyal that Viktor started to paint, mostly landscapce and village life scenes. Recalling his childhood in a letter to Vladimir Stasov, Vasnetsov remarked that he "had lived with peasant children and liked them not as a narodnik
but as a friend".
shopkeeper. He also helped an exiled Polish
artist, Michał Elwiro Andriolli, to execute fresco
es for Vyatka's Alexander Nevsky
cathedral.
Having graduated from the seminary, Viktor decided to move to Saint Petersburg
to study art. He auctioned his paintings of Woman Harvester and Milk-maid (both 1867) in order to raise money required for the trip to the Russian capital.
. Three years later, the Peredvizhniki
movement of realist painters rebelled against the Academism.
Vasnetsov befriended their leader Ivan Kramskoi
, referring to him as his teacher. He also became very close to his fellow student Ilya Yefimovich Repin
.
It is ironic, but Viktor, whose name is associated with historical and mythological paintings, initially avoided these subjects at all costs. For his graphic composition of Christ
and Pontius Pilate
Before the People, the Academy awarded a small silver medal to him.
In the early 1870s he executed a lot of engraving
s depicting contemporary life. Two of them (Provincial Bookseller from 1870 and A Boy with a Bottle of Vodka from 1872) won him a bronze medal at the World Fair
in London
(1874).
At that period he also started producing genre paintings in oil. Such pieces as Peasant Singers (1873) and Moving House (1876) were warmly welcomed by democratic circles of Russian society.
. While living in France, Viktor studied classical and contemporary paintings, academist and Impressionist
alike. At that period, he painted Acrobats (1877), produced prints, and exhibited some of his works at the Salon
. It was in Paris that he became fascinated with fairy-tale subjects, starting to work on Ivan Tsarevich
Riding a Grey Wolf and The Firebird. Vasnetsov was a model for Sadko
in Repin's celebrated painting Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. In 1877 he returned to Moscow
.
s, executing some of his best known pieces: Knight at the Crossroads (1878), Prince Igor
's Battlefield (1878),
Three tsarevnas of the Underground Kingdom (1879–1881), The Magic Carpet (1880), and Alionushka (1881).
These works were not appreciated at the time they appeared. Many radical critics dismissed them as undermining the realist principles of the Peredvizhniki
. Even such prominent connoisseurs as Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov refused to buy them. The vogue for Vasnetsov's paintings would spread in the 1880s, when he turned to religious subjects and executed a series of icons for Abramtsevo
estate of his patron Savva Mamontov
.
s in the St Vladimir's Cathedral of Kiev
. This was a challenging work which ran contrary to both Russian and Western traditions of religious paintings. The influential art critic Vladimir Stasov labelled them a sacrilegious play with religious feelings of the Russian people. Another popular critic, Dmitry Filosofov
, referred to these frescoes as "the first bridge over 200 years-old gulf separating different classes of Russian society".
While living in Kiev, Vasnetsov made friends with Mikhail Vrubel
, who was also involved in the cathedral's decoration. While they worked together, Vasnetsov taught the younger artist a great deal. It was in Kiev that Vasnetsov finally finished Ivan Tsarevich
Riding a Grey Wolf and started his most famous painting, the Bogatyr
s.
In 1885 the painter travelled to Italy
. The same year he worked on stage designs and costumes for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
's opera The Snow Maiden.
.
At the turn of the century, Vasnetsov elaborated his hallmark "fairy-tale" style of Russian Revival
ist architecture. His first acclaimed design was a church in Abramtsevo (1882), executed jointly with Vasily Polenov
. In 1894, he designed his own mansion in Moscow
. The Russian pavilion of the World Fair in Paris
followed in 1898. Finally, in 1904, Vasnetsov designed the best known of his "fairy-tale" buildings — the Tretyakov Gallery
.
Between 1906 and 1911, Vasnetsov worked on the design of the mosaics for Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw
; he was also involved in the design of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Moscow
.
In 1912, Vasnetsov was given a noble title by Czar Nicholas II. In 1914, he designed a revenue stamp intended for voluntary collection for victims of World War I.
Even prior to the Russian Revolution
, Vasnetsov became active as a regent of that gallery. He allocated a significant portion of his income to the State Historical Museum
, so that a large part of the museum's collection was acquired on Vasnetsov's money. After the October Revolution
he advocated removing some of the religious paintings (notably those by Alexander Ivanov) from churches to the Tretyakov Gallery.
In 1918 Vasnetsov participated in the designing of a military uniform for the newly founded Red Army
. Vasnetsov is credited with the creation of budenovka
(initially named bogatyrka), a military hat reproducing the style of ancient Rus'
cone
-shaped helmets.
3586 Vasnetsov
, discovered by Soviet
astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova
in 1978 is named after Viktor Vasnetsov and Apollinary Vasnetsov.
In the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Vasnetsov's painting of Ivan the Terrible (see gallery below) is anachronistically presented as if it already existed in that Tsar's lifetime, and as being sent by Ivan to England when he offers to marry Queen Elizabeth I.
Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Kirov , formerly known as Vyatka and Khlynov, is a city in northeastern European Russia, on the Vyatka River, and the administrative center of Kirov Oblast. Population: -History:...
, May 15 (N.S.), 1848 — Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, July 23, 1926) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
who specialized in mythological
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
and historical
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
subjects. He was described as co-founder of folklorist/romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
in the Russian painting and a key figure of the revivalist
Russian Revival
The Russian Revival style is the generic term for a number of different movements within Russian architecture that arose in second quarter of the 19th century and was an eclectic melding of pre-Peterine Russian architecture and elements of Byzantine architecture.The Russian Revival style arose...
movement in Russian art.
Childhood (1848-1858)
Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Kirov , formerly known as Vyatka and Khlynov, is a city in northeastern European Russia, on the Vyatka River, and the administrative center of Kirov Oblast. Population: -History:...
guberniya
Guberniya
A guberniya was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor , a word borrowed from Latin ,...
in 1848, the second of the six children. His father Mikhail Vasilievich Vasnetsov, a village priest, was a well-educated 'philosophy-inclined' man interested in natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
, astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
and painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. His grandfather was an icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
painter. Two of Mikhail Vasnetsov's three sons, Viktor and Apollinary
Apollinary Vasnetsov
Apollinary Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov , 1856, the village of Riabovo, Vyatka province - January 23, 1933, Moscow) was a Russian painter and graphic artist whose elder brother was the more famous Viktor Vasnetsov. He specialized in scenes from the medieval history of Moscow.Vasnetsov was a painter and a...
, became remarkable painters, the third one becoming a schoolteacher. It was in Lopyal that Viktor started to paint, mostly landscapce and village life scenes. Recalling his childhood in a letter to Vladimir Stasov, Vasnetsov remarked that he "had lived with peasant children and liked them not as a narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
but as a friend".
Vyatka (1858-1867)
From the age of ten, Viktor studied in a seminary in Vyatka, each summer moving with his family to a rich merchant village of Ryabovo. During his seminary years, he worked for a local iconIcon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
shopkeeper. He also helped an exiled Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
artist, Michał Elwiro Andriolli, to execute fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
es for Vyatka's Alexander Nevsky
Alexander Nevsky
Alexander Nevsky was the Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Vladimir during some of the most trying times in the city's history. Commonly regarded as the key figure of medieval Rus, Alexander was the grandson of Vsevolod the Big Nest and rose to legendary status on account of his military...
cathedral.
Having graduated from the seminary, Viktor decided to move to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
to study art. He auctioned his paintings of Woman Harvester and Milk-maid (both 1867) in order to raise money required for the trip to the Russian capital.
Saint Petersburg (1867-1876)
In August 1867 Viktor entered the Imperial Academy of ArtsImperial Academy of Arts
The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years later in 1789...
. Three years later, the Peredvizhniki
Peredvizhniki
Peredvizhniki , often called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, were a group of Russian realist artists who in protest at academic restrictions formed an artists' cooperative; it evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions in 1870.- History :In 1863 a group of fourteen students...
movement of realist painters rebelled against the Academism.
Vasnetsov befriended their leader Ivan Kramskoi
Ivan Kramskoi
Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi was a Russian painter and art critic. He was an intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement in 1860-1880.-Life:...
, referring to him as his teacher. He also became very close to his fellow student Ilya Yefimovich Repin
Ilya Yefimovich Repin
Ilya Yefimovich Repin |realist]]ic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later...
.
It is ironic, but Viktor, whose name is associated with historical and mythological paintings, initially avoided these subjects at all costs. For his graphic composition of Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
and Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...
Before the People, the Academy awarded a small silver medal to him.
In the early 1870s he executed a lot of engraving
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
s depicting contemporary life. Two of them (Provincial Bookseller from 1870 and A Boy with a Bottle of Vodka from 1872) won him a bronze medal at the World Fair
World fair
World Fair can refer to:* Expo , a large public exhibition* This World Fair, an American rock band...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(1874).
At that period he also started producing genre paintings in oil. Such pieces as Peasant Singers (1873) and Moving House (1876) were warmly welcomed by democratic circles of Russian society.
Paris (1876-1877)
In 1876 Repin invited Vasnetsov to join the Peredvizhniki colony in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. While living in France, Viktor studied classical and contemporary paintings, academist and Impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
alike. At that period, he painted Acrobats (1877), produced prints, and exhibited some of his works at the Salon
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
. It was in Paris that he became fascinated with fairy-tale subjects, starting to work on Ivan Tsarevich
Ivan Tsarevich
Ivan Tsarevich is one of the main heroes of Russian folklore, usually a protagonist, often engaged in a struggle with Koschei. Along with Ivan the Fool, Ivan Tsarevich is a placeholder name rather than a certain character....
Riding a Grey Wolf and The Firebird. Vasnetsov was a model for Sadko
Sadko
Sadko is a Russian medieval epic . The title character is an adventurer, merchant and gusli musician from Novgorod.-Synopsis:Sadko played the gusli on the shores of a lake. The Sea Tsar enjoyed his music, and offered to help him...
in Repin's celebrated painting Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. In 1877 he returned to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
Moscow (1877-1884)
In the late 1870s Vasnetsov concentrated on illustrating Russian fairy tales and bylinaBylina
Bylina or Bylyna is a traditional Russian oral epic narrative poem. Byliny singers loosely utilize historical fact greatly embellished with fantasy or hyperbole to create their songs...
s, executing some of his best known pieces: Knight at the Crossroads (1878), Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
's Battlefield (1878),
Three tsarevnas of the Underground Kingdom (1879–1881), The Magic Carpet (1880), and Alionushka (1881).
These works were not appreciated at the time they appeared. Many radical critics dismissed them as undermining the realist principles of the Peredvizhniki
Peredvizhniki
Peredvizhniki , often called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, were a group of Russian realist artists who in protest at academic restrictions formed an artists' cooperative; it evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions in 1870.- History :In 1863 a group of fourteen students...
. Even such prominent connoisseurs as Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov refused to buy them. The vogue for Vasnetsov's paintings would spread in the 1880s, when he turned to religious subjects and executed a series of icons for Abramtsevo
Abramtsevo Colony
Abramtsevo is an estate located north of Moscow, in the proximity of Khotkovo, that became a center for the Slavophile movement and artistic activity in the 19th century.-History:...
estate of his patron Savva Mamontov
Savva Mamontov
Savva Ivanovich Mamontov was a famous Russian industrialist, merchant, entrepreneur, and patron of the arts.-Biography:He was a son of the wealthy merchant and industrialist Ivan Feodorovich Mamontov and Maria Tikhonovna . In 1841 the family moved to Moscow. From 1852 he studied in St...
.
Kiev 1884-1889
In 1884-1889 Vasnetsov was commissioned to paint frescoFresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
s in the St Vladimir's Cathedral of Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
. This was a challenging work which ran contrary to both Russian and Western traditions of religious paintings. The influential art critic Vladimir Stasov labelled them a sacrilegious play with religious feelings of the Russian people. Another popular critic, Dmitry Filosofov
Dmitry Filosofov
Dmitry Vladimirovich Filosofov was a Russian author, essayist, literary critic, religious thinker, newspaper editor and political activist, best known for his role in the early 1900s influential Mir Iskusstva circle and part of quasi-religious Troyebratstvo , along with two of his...
, referred to these frescoes as "the first bridge over 200 years-old gulf separating different classes of Russian society".
While living in Kiev, Vasnetsov made friends with Mikhail Vrubel
Mikhail Vrubel
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel is usually regarded amongst the Russian painters of the Symbolist movement. In reality, he deliberately stood aloof from contemporary art trends, so that the origin of his unusual manner should be sought in Late Byzantine and Early Renaissance painting.-Early...
, who was also involved in the cathedral's decoration. While they worked together, Vasnetsov taught the younger artist a great deal. It was in Kiev that Vasnetsov finally finished Ivan Tsarevich
Ivan Tsarevich
Ivan Tsarevich is one of the main heroes of Russian folklore, usually a protagonist, often engaged in a struggle with Koschei. Along with Ivan the Fool, Ivan Tsarevich is a placeholder name rather than a certain character....
Riding a Grey Wolf and started his most famous painting, the Bogatyr
Bogatyr
The bogatyr was a medieval heroic warrior of Kievan Rus' and the Novgorodian Republic, akin to a Western European knight errant.- Kievan Rus' :...
s.
In 1885 the painter travelled to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The same year he worked on stage designs and costumes for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
's opera The Snow Maiden.
Later years (1890-1926)
The following two decades were productive for Vasnetsov, but most of his later paintings were perceived as being of secondary importance. He increasingly turned to other media during this period. In 1897 he collaborated with his brother Apollinary on the theatrical design of another Rimsky-Korsakov premiere, SadkoSadko (opera)
Sadko is an opera in seven scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto was written by the composer, with assistance from Vladimir Belsky, Vladimir Stasov, and others. Rimsky-Korsakov was first inspired by the bylina of Sadko in 1867, when he completed a tone poem on the subject, his Op. 5...
.
At the turn of the century, Vasnetsov elaborated his hallmark "fairy-tale" style of Russian Revival
Russian Revival
The Russian Revival style is the generic term for a number of different movements within Russian architecture that arose in second quarter of the 19th century and was an eclectic melding of pre-Peterine Russian architecture and elements of Byzantine architecture.The Russian Revival style arose...
ist architecture. His first acclaimed design was a church in Abramtsevo (1882), executed jointly with Vasily Polenov
Vasily Polenov
Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov was a Russian landscape painter associated with the Peredvizhniki movement of realist artists.-Biography:...
. In 1894, he designed his own mansion in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. The Russian pavilion of the World Fair in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
followed in 1898. Finally, in 1904, Vasnetsov designed the best known of his "fairy-tale" buildings — the Tretyakov Gallery
Tretyakov Gallery
The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection,...
.
Between 1906 and 1911, Vasnetsov worked on the design of the mosaics for Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Saxon Square built by authorities of Imperial Russia in Warsaw, Poland, then under the rule of the Russian Empire. The cathedral was designed by distinguished Russian architect Leon Benois, and was built between 1894 and 1912...
; he was also involved in the design of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Moscow
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Moscow
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Moscow was the largest of a series of cathedrals erected in Imperial Russia in commemoration of Alexander Nevsky, the patron saint of Emperors Alexander II and Alexander III...
.
In 1912, Vasnetsov was given a noble title by Czar Nicholas II. In 1914, he designed a revenue stamp intended for voluntary collection for victims of World War I.
Even prior to the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, Vasnetsov became active as a regent of that gallery. He allocated a significant portion of his income to the State Historical Museum
State Historical Museum
The State Historical Museum of Russia is a museum of Russian history wedged between Red Square and Manege Square in Moscow. Its exhibitions range from relics of the prehistoric tribes inhabiting present-day Russia, through priceless artworks acquired by members of the Romanov dynasty...
, so that a large part of the museum's collection was acquired on Vasnetsov's money. After the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
he advocated removing some of the religious paintings (notably those by Alexander Ivanov) from churches to the Tretyakov Gallery.
In 1918 Vasnetsov participated in the designing of a military uniform for the newly founded Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
. Vasnetsov is credited with the creation of budenovka
Budenovka
Budenovka is a distinctive type of hat and an essential part of the communist uniform of the Russian Civil War and later. Its official name was the "broadcloth helmet" . Named after Semyon Budyonny, it was also known as the "frunzenka" after Mikhail Frunze...
(initially named bogatyrka), a military hat reproducing the style of ancient Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
cone
Cone (geometry)
A cone is an n-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a base to a point called the apex or vertex. Formally, it is the solid figure formed by the locus of all straight line segments that join the apex to the base...
-shaped helmets.
Legacy
A minor planetMinor planet
An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...
3586 Vasnetsov
3586 Vasnetsov
3586 Vasnetsov is a main-belt asteroid discovered on September 26, 1978 by L. Zhuravleva at Nauchnyj. It is named after Russian artists Viktor Vasnetsov and his brother Apollinary Vasnetsov.- External links :*...
, discovered by Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova
Lyudmila Zhuravlyova
Lyudmila Vasilyevna Zhuravleva is a Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian astronomer.She works at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.She also serves as president...
in 1978 is named after Viktor Vasnetsov and Apollinary Vasnetsov.
In the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Vasnetsov's painting of Ivan the Terrible (see gallery below) is anachronistically presented as if it already existed in that Tsar's lifetime, and as being sent by Ivan to England when he offers to marry Queen Elizabeth I.
Sources
- A. K. Lazuko Victor Vasnetsov, Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1990, ISBN 5-7370-0107-5
- Vasnetsov Gallery
- Poem of seven Fairy Tales Victor Vasnetsov at Tanais Gallery