MIKHAIL VASILYEVICH NESTEROV (1862-1942)
Known Russian artist, producer of historical and religious pictures, landscapist, portraitist, author of monumental wall paintings. Studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under V.G.Perov and A.K.Savrasov, at the Academy of Arts in St.-Petersburg under P.P.Chistyakov. In 1898 became academician.

The works by M.V.Nesterov and V.M.Vasnetsov in the Vladimir's Cathedral in Kiev in the early 1890s proved to become a landmark in the development of Russian religious painting. Resting on traditional Byzantine samples, the artists aimed to make the heroes of the church history closer to the moods of their contemporaries. For Nesterov it was especially important in this process to show the unity of his heroes with the world of nature. The birches on the image of Princess Olga, a pictorial replica of the fresco in Vladimir's cathedral, are as friable and thoughtful, as the heroine herself. But in contrast, in the nativity scene, the nature is full of solemnity, and at the same time - of latent alert expressing the heroes' inner state.