The Swan Princess

In 1900 Vrubel was deep in the theatre, designing the sets and costumes for a private Moscow production of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, drawn from a Pushkin fairy tale. The role of the enchanted Swan Princess, a maiden who can turn into a swan, was sung by Vrubel's own wife, Nadezhda Zabela. He painted this that spring, and you can feel the stage in it, the twilight water, the crown and pearls, the great feathered wings caught in the moment of becoming a woman. She looks back over her shoulder with an expression that is hard to read, half warning, half farewell. Vrubel's world was already darkening toward the mental illness of his last years, and of all his strange, glittering pictures this became the one Russians took most to heart. It hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.