Demon Seated in a Garden

The subject of this painting is the hero of Mikhail Lermontov's Romantic narrative poem of the same name. This work, written in the late 1830s tells the story of a Byronic demon fated to love a Georgian princess, who dies as a result of his kiss. She is saved by angels, while he is doomed to spend eternity alone. This overheated story fits perfectly with the Romantic temperament, but would have been anathema to realist writers and painters. Vrubel described the Demon as "A spirit which unites in itself the male and female appearances, a spirit which is not so much evil as suffering and wounded, but withal a powerful and noble being." Note the otherworldly expression in the Demon's eyes (as opposed to the expression in Perov's portrait of Turgenev, for example), symbolic of the existence of a world beyond that of the everyday. Note also the background, which is filled with such symbolically-laden images as sunset, fire (which stands for the end of the world), as well as aggressively nonrealistic flowers.