“Snowflake

A woman wearing an elaborate jeweled kokoshnik headdress and beaded collar stands with hands folded beneath her chin, her patterned sleeve and gown decorated with small painted birds and beasts. She rises above a cluster of pale, carved stone or ice heads shaped like horses and faces in the foreground, while a muted snow-covered village of log houses and bare trees stretches behind her under a hazy sky.

Cool blue-greens wash over the whole scene, broken only by warm gold highlights on the headdress and small yellow blossoms in the grass. Soft, blurred brushwork dissolves the background into mist while the carved figures keep crisp, textured edges, giving the painting a hushed, dreamlike, fairy-tale stillness.