(Illustration of Vasilisa the Beautiful)
I thought while stuck at home I’d do regular posts showing things I like which other people may not have heard of. Ivan Bilibin was a Russian artist most famous for his lavishly illustrated books of fairy tales taking inspiration from Japanese wood prints, Russian icon painting and Ye Olde Slavonic script.
As his books are from the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th Century, they are now out of copyright and available scanned online. Obviously the text is no good to anyone who doesn’t know Russian, but almost every page is illustrated. Here’s a selection (I’ve just given them numbers because lots of the titles are just Skazki Fairy Tales) :
