43. Through Eras and Continents: Unexpected Turn.

Jumping a few centuries ahead... I am not really good in history, so I am not sure my chronology is accurate...

I'll start with this "triple-portrait." I love it for its laconic lines, each of them plays more than one role.
Everyone with Russian (or any Slavic) cultural background will recognized them right away, but for others, these are epic heroes from around 1000 a.d. (yes, I looked it up!). I actually saw that their Russian name, bogatyr, or vityaz, was used in English untranslated.

"Russian Knights"

"Витя-зи"

Change of plans! Originally I just planned to present a mix of Victor's drawings about different countries between ancient time and now, but this will have to wait. When I posted this last drawing, I tried to think of some brief explanation about these guys, so my non-Russian readers knew what I was talking about, and I recalled a famous painting by Victor (!) Vasnetsov from 1898, and then I suddenly remembered one more depiction of bogatyrs that Victor drew when he was 21. So I decided that three images about bogatyrs deserve a separate post.

"Victor Vasnetzov, Bogatyrs"

"Виктор Васнецов, Богатыри"

I actually remember when and how Victor drew his version of this classic painting. At that time he made up images for all his friends and used them to tell stories about their past and current adventures. Victor himself is on the right. He explained that he'd chosen the image of Napoleon for himself because of his height and habits of a "little tyrant."