Shambinago, S; Rzhiga, V.F.; Golikov, Ivan (Illustrator)

Slovo o polku Igoreve [The Tale of Igor's Campaign]

Moscow: Academia, 1934.

Hardcover. Near fine. 16.75 x 11.5 inches, 49 pp. in cloth boards with large Palekh lacquer-style mounted illustration, illustrated endpapers, in original publisher's box. Chromolithograph title page, 10 full-page lacquer-style plates by Golikov, each within an individual chromolithographed border, decorative page ornaments and initials. Golikov was a well known Russian icon painter. The text, considered a masterpiece of Old Russian literature, is "an account of the unsuccessful campaign in 1185 of Prince Igor of Novgorod-Seversky against the Polovtsy (Kipchak, or Cumans). As in the great French epic The Song of Roland, Igor’s heroic pride draws him into a combat in which the odds are too great for him. Though defeated, Igor escapes his captors and returns to his people. The tale was written anonymously (1185–87) and preserved in a single manuscript, which was discovered in 1795 by A.I. Musin-Pushkin, published in 1800, and lost during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812" (Britannica).

Item #24417

Price: $900.00