The Monomachy of Mstislav and Rededia

The Monomachy of Mstislav and Rededia, painted in 1943 when Nicholas Roerich was living in Kullu in the Indian Himalayan foothills, engages with an episode from the Russian Primary Chronicle describing a combat between the Tmutarakan prince Mstislav and the Kasog leader Rededia in 1022, in which both armies agreed to abide by the outcome of single combat between their leaders. The subject connects to Roerich's lifelong engagement with the pre-Christian and early Christian cultures of medieval Russia — the same historical world that had produced his archaeological work, his designs for The Rite of Spring, and his great series of ancient Slavic paintings. That he was painting this archaic Russian subject from his Himalayan exile reflects the intensity of his connection to Russian cultural memory even after decades of living abroad following the Revolution.

Oil on canvas in Roerich's characteristic Himalayan period style, with the vivid color planes and flattened, decorative spatial organization that marked his mature work. The mountainous setting that appears in so many of his Indian paintings is here recontextualized as the steppe landscape of ancient Russia.