The fourth volume of a six-part survey of the State Tretyakov Gallery gathers 749 works by 140 artists on sacred and legendary subjects, reaching back to medieval icon painting. Two impulses run side by side. One is faith: Alexander Ivanov spends twenty years on a single biblical morning and leaves hundreds of studies behind him; Mikhail Nesterov paints a Russia of hermits and birch woods; Vasily Polenov walks the roads of Palestine with a sketchbook. The other is folklore: Victor Vasnetsov builds a visual language for the bogatyrs, the firebird and the sleeping princess that Russian children still see first; Mikhail Vrubel answers him with demons. Vasily Surikov sets the two against each other in history itself. Icons, biblical cycles, epic heroes, fairy tales and the great historical canvases. Large reproductions, each with its painter, title and date.

Alexander Nemirov is the publisher of Aeneas Press. For The Gallery Masterworks he chose the plates and their order, checked the rights of every reproduction, and wrote the English captions and commentary.