Symbolism is a prolific genre, widely explored in literature and fine arts. These creations are abundant in symbols that allow us to see through the visible screen of everyday routine and rationalized world to grasp the higher spiritual reality that is beyond the reach of reason, but wide open for emotions and intuition.

This transcendent reality comes through to us in the form of symbols that we should thoroughly look for and decipher. The great mysteries of the universe are incoded into our feelings and give birth to symbolist paintings. This is what makes them so enigmatic and overwhelming. A household portrait, a simple landscape or a still life, run-off-the mill people and objects do not suggest any mystery that one would be excited to discover. And therefore symbolists preferred to turn to mythological, literary and religious stories to find the mystical images and scenes whose multiple layers unveil the threshold between the rational and irrational and let the imagination replace reasoning in the course of learning and apprehending the laws of the universe. The blending of reality and fantasy inherent to symbolist paintings is best revealed in the scenes from unreal, bookish world. Preserving likelihood to the visible reality they still remain part of the spiritual world, symbols of the higher reality, the artifacts of the unearthly beauty and wisdom. Literary paintings of symbolists differ greatly from works of the same genre in other styles. They are ambiguous in terms of time and place of the story, the images are statuesque, motionless. The draughtsmanship is obscure, the colours are subdued and intensly symbolic.