Chagall’s painting “White Horse” is made in “nocturnal” dark and light blue and dark green colors. A bride with an infant, who is turned towards us, is riding a white horse. This scene is iconographic and refers to the Russian icon Our Lady of the Sign. Above the figure of the bride, we can see Chagall’s traditional characters in the dark blue night sky: the violinist and the cello man. Below, we see a reclining clown with Chagall’s profile, who is giving a bouquet of colorful flowers to the bride. He is looking at the lit menorah on the ceremonial table with gifts.

The mother and infant on the white horse, frozen in a conventional medieval posture, resemble scenes of the flight into Egypt. Instead of the Biblical Bethlehem, we see the old and abandoned Vitebsk, or rather the part of it where the artist’s house stood on Pokrovskaya Street. Behind the window, we can see the night sky, which consists of blue segments of triangles and black crescents with their silhouettes marked with light paint.

This painting is perceived like a vision in an interior, where the walls have moved apart and the ceiling has turned into a cosmic space, making the scene resemble a poetic dream.