The miniature “Yaroslavna”s Lament” was created by Ivan Vakurov, one of the founders of Palekh miniature painting style, in the last year of the Great Patriotic War. The painting is based on the monument of Old Russian literature of the 12th century “The Tale of Igor”s Campaign’. This work embodied a fiery call for perseverance to the artist’s contemporaries.

The Old Russian “Tale…” describes an unsuccessful raid of Russian princes against the Polovtsians in 1185. Knyaz Igor Svyatoslavich, Prince of Novgorod-Seversk, led the army. “Yaroslavna”s Lament’ is the part of the poem, in which the author gives an account about how the prince’s wife grieves for her captive husband and for the fallen Russian soldiers. These are the lines from the poem (translated by Vladimir Nabokov):

The image of Yaroslavna was painted by Ivan Vakurov concisely and convincingly: it symbolized an overwhelming national grief, as many fathers, husbands and sons of those who also were “Yaroslavnas” died during the Great Patriotic War. At the same time, the Vakurov’s ‘grieving wife’ did not appeal to natural forces for help, as did Yaroslavna in the poem, but to her ancestors — Old Russian warriors who float in the clouds above the Fatherland.

Palekh artists paid great attention to historical themes and often conveyed them through the prism of literature. Scenes with historical events could also serve as a reaction to the events happening in their own lives — an attempt to find moral support in the experience of valiant ancestors. Often artists paid tribute to medieval battles: the Battle of Lake Peipus led by Alexander Nevsky, the Battle of Kulikovo and others. The magnitude of the threat in the 1940s forced people to look for parallels with old heroic battles that Russian people fought with utmost courage.

Due to the war, the appeal for patriotism was center stage, thus pushing aside plots celebrating the assertion of socialist values. It was a peculiar ‘reconciliation’ with the events of pre-revolutionary past.

In the 1930s, Palekh artists repeatedly painted compositions inspired by ‘The Tale of Igor”s Campaign’: Ivan Golikov was the first to create a series of illustrations for the poem in 1933, which included a very lyrical image of Yaroslavna.

Ivan Vakurov also created an earlier version of ‘Yaroslavna’s Lament’ in 1936. Composition-wise it was similar to “Alyonushka” by artist Viktor Vasnetsov: in profound grief Yaroslavna sits on the city’s wall, with her head on her knees.