This striking landscape by the famed Russian artist-architect Nikolai Vassiliev, a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, boasts bright colors and masterful brushwork. Executed in the style of Art Nouveau, it is an authentic answer to Ferdinand Hodler's concept of "parallelism." Using the processes of simplification, symmetry, and the repetition of motifs the artist sought to isolate and extract the essential qualities of nature. Through a patient structured study of a location-the rugged mountainous top with an impressive historic edifice overlooking a village in the valley below-Vassiliev created a symbolical, atemporal image of the universe where a man-made structure is both an organic continuation and an outcome of invisible geological forces at work. 

Reference: Кондаков С. Н. Юбилейный справочник Императорской Академии художеств, 1764—1914. С.-Петербург, 1914-1915, том 2, c. 303)