ivan bilibin ~vassilissa the beautiful and the witch baba yaga

i love ivan bilibin’s art. the stark outlines and gentle colors are lovely. 

“my white, bright day.”

“the red sun”

“that is my servant, the dark night.”

baba yaga

and yes, mike mignola has spent the last decade paying “homage” to bilibin. i’m not being catty, i like mignola’s art.

so vassilissa takes this flaming skull home to her bitchy step-mother and horrible step-sisters where it burns them to death, leaving vassilissa unharmed. BOOM! and that’s how they do cinderella in russia! {kind of.}

so then an old woman takes her in and vassilissa makes some really amazing shirts. the tsar loves the shirts and wants to meet vassilissa. she’s totally gorgeous so the tsar wants to marry her and presumably never wear subpar shirts again. 

one of the reoccurring funny things in his art is how ugly the tsar always is unless he’s specifically a young hero, then he looks quite a bit like the artist himself- which is not ugly! see below.

so the biggest surprise is, in addition to being an exceptional artist, ivan bilibin was a stone cold fox. i’m not kidding. look at that guy. really hot- like anton chekhov hot. {trust me, google it.} i don’t know why i’m always surprised when people from the past were good looking, but i am. i’m pretty sure i would have minced over to him {have you ever tried to run in a corset?} and tried to make small talk. he would have babbled in russian and i would have cried “whatever! kiss me you fool!”


not coincidentally, he totally looks like my husband.