Product Description
Russian "Ovo" Art (Элегантная Живопись на Яйцо). Divination, or Fortune-Telling (Гадание). Well-known in fortune-telling literature, a young girl sits in the dark, lights many candles before the mirror and peers into the "gallery of reflections", hoping to see the face of her fiance, or future husband. The back of the egg is painted with a village in winter, as the best time for fortune-telling is midnight during Christmas.
The painter of the image on the egg is Ivanova (Иванова), and it is dated 1993. On the side is a cartouche in which "Russian Bylina" is written. The lacquering is silky smooth and has been polished to a crystal clear gloss. The top of the wooden egg has a metal finial. It was painted in Sergiev-Posad. 5" in height with an interesting stand.
The style of painting is similar to that of Konstantin Vasilyev (1942-1976), who was a prolific Russian painter and illustrator and produced more than 400 paintings and drawings. He is classified as a Symbolist with emphasis on mythological painting. He drew inspiration from Russian epic novels as well as the Northern Slavs, the prehistory of the Russian nation, Scandinavian legends, and fairy tales.
In the Russian culture, the egg often plays a key role, for example, the "Krestrazh, or Horcrux" of Kashchei the Immortal, in which the fatal needle is found in the egg. In the “Chicken Ryaba”, the golden egg brought many problems to a respectable family, and in “Gulliver's Journey” by Jonathan Swift, a real war broke out because of eggs: two powerful powers argued about how to break a boiled egg - from a sharp end or with the blunt side. At the court of one of the fanatical emperors, the "blunt-tips" were subjected to persecutions.
