«The goal of poetry is to find the image of the muse by expressing the worldly unity of universal truth in her image. The goal of religion is to embody that unity. Therefore art is the shortest path to religion; here mankind, aware of its essence, becomes one with the unity of the Eternal Feminine: when art is complete it turns into the religious art of theurgy» (Andrei Bely, «Apokalipsis v russkoi poezii», Vesy, 1905, No. 4, pp. 11-28).

Vrubel, like the movement of Russian Symbolism that his work heralded, felt an affinity for the aesthetic cult of the mystical feminine essence. His work expressed this theme in a variety of ways, resonating with the poetic understanding of the Eternal Feminine of Vladimir Solovyov's prophecies and the writings of Symbolist poets (Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov). The Symbolists perceived the feminine essence as the soul of the world, a means for understanding the mysteries whose creative persona reveals divine beauty. The artist's method, which he developed by painting both live models and figures of his imagination, typically sees something «special,» in the words of Konstantin Korovin, in the real image of his female models. In a period when Vrubel was reinventing his artistic language and exploring new forms of spiritual and artistic synthesis, his explorations took on a special aspect the discovery of a new, mysterious Muse who appeared in a variety of forms. This is directly related to the nature of the symbol; it has «many faces, many meanings and dark in its ultimate depth» (Vyacheslav Ivanov).

Vrubel's study Nude in a Renaissance Setting (1883, Kiev Museum of Russian Art) is often seen as a prologue to this theme. In it, the artist attempted to convey «the most detailed live impressions of [his] model,» and in doing so, he left the central figure incomplete. During his academic period, Vrubel used literary references to explore the theme, at first Hamlet (Hamlet and Ophelia, 1884, State Russian Museum; Hamlet and Ophelia, 1888, State Tretyakov Gallery), and later Tamara in illustrations to Mikhail Lermontov's poem The Demon and Marguerite in decorative panels based on Goethe's Faust. In the first sketch (Hamlet and Ophelia, 1884, State Russian Museum) Ophelia is placed on a pedestal; she is an object of the hero's poetic contemplation. Her profile ripples, indeterminate in the moonlight.

In Vrubel's Kiev period, his search for the female ideal took on two polar aspects. The first was his work with the figure of the Virgin. The image that appeared in the uncompleted sketch Female Head (Emilia Prakhova) (1884-1885, State Tretyakov Gallery) is marked by a spiritual exaltation and highly individual features; it has been identified with Emilia Lvovna Prakhova, whom Vrubel was attracted to at the time. The second aspect was his search for his muse (the painting entitled Portrait of a Girl against a Persian Carpet, 1886, Kiev Museum of Russian Art), reflected the trend of Oriental stylization. This is Vrubel's first work to employ Asian motifs; here the young model is like a precious pearl in an ostentatious frame. Curiously, Valentin Serov painted Girl with Peaches (1887, State Tretyakov Gallery) in the same year. The images of young children stood at the roots of both Art Nouveau and Impressionism. During Vrubel's Moscow period of the late 1880s and 1890s, when he was absorbed with the image of the Demon, Savva Mamontov hired him to work on a new concept for his theater. His Muse moved to the imaginary space of the theater, where many epochs collide. The phantom silhouette of the Muse slipped through sketches for stage curtains and allegorical compositions, taking on a stylized feel in the image of an antique figure holding a lyre (Muse, Radishchev State Art Museum in Saratov; Italy, Night in Naples, 1891, State Tretyakov Gallery; Pegasus and Three Muses, 1890s, State Tretyakov Gallery).

The Fortune Teller (1895, State Tretyakov Gallery) marks a turning point in the artist's treatment of the theme. This is where Vrubel started thinking in the categories of Symbolism. Beginning with this painting, his female figures resonate with the theme of the Demon. Vrubel stopped employing associations and external exotics; instead, his interest turned to the mystical face of fate, which seeps through the exterior of his subject. Her face is like a sacred mask that emanates both Light and Dark. She bears the stamp of a higher mystery of existence, disguised as a game of chance.

Vrubel's acquaintance with the singer Nadezhda Zabela culminates his search for the Beautiful Lady; she becomes his wife and his true Muse. Vrubel admired her acting talent: «All singers sing like birds, but Nadya sings like a human being». Her face is evoked in Vrubel's depictions of women from the late 1890s and the early 1900s, which include of course Portrait of Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel (1898, State Tretyakov Gallery), as well as works where her image undergoes complex metamorphoses, appearing as a reflection of the artist's visionary experience in Portrait of Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel (1904, State Russian Museum), echoing the image of the Six-winged Seraphim (1904, State Russian Museum), or surprising the viewer with analytic verism in Lady in Lilac. Portrait of the Actress of Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel (c. 1900, State Russian Museum).

Vrubel began this period with the monumental panels Princess of Dreams (1896, State Tretyakov Gallery), for the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition and the central panel on Faust, Marguerite (1896, State Tretyakov Gallery) for the Gothic parlor of Alexander Morozov's mansion in Moscow. Both panels were painted in the year of Vrubel's marriage. The style and imagery of the panels, which continue the explorations of the Pre-Raphaelites in England, also focused on the central theme of this group, the theme of mystic love as the highest act of spiritual heroics, which can be done only by ritual sacrifice, suffering and death. Tamara in a coffin (1890-1891, State Tretyakov Gallery), an illustration to Lermontov's The Demon, is considered a precursor to this theme in Vrubel's work. At this time, the images of Princess Melisande and Marguerite took up much of Vrubel's attention; on the one hand they suggest his wife's transformations in the theater, yet on the other hand they represent Vrubel's consistent investigation of the theme of Eternal Beauty. These images represent Vrubel's closest contact with Russian Symbolist poetry. The watercolor Primavera (State Russian Museum) organically fits in the circle of these works. Vrubel's portraits of his wife, which he saw as symbols of the unity of earthly and heavenly love, form an entire series in his work, a line of internal dialogue of the late 1890s and early 1900s. The first and final phases of this path are marked by masterpieces such as Portrait of Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel (1898, State Tretyakov Gallery) and the unfinished portrait After the Concert, Portrait of Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel in a Dress Designed by the Artist (1905, State Tretyakov Gallery).

The former strikes the viewer with the immediacy of the model's pose, atypical for Vrubel, and the light palette, which serves to reinforce the mysteriousness of the image. Here one can almost hear the lines of Vladimir Solovyov's poem:

In his final, unfinished portrait of his wife, Vrubel attempted to capture the tragedy of his creative talent, referring to the condition of the artist creating a theatrical transformation. The dissolution of the model's material form reveals the phantom light of the soul. Vrubel was fascinated by the treatment of this theme in folklore. Images of fantastic fairy-tale creatures evoked by parts from Rimsky-Korsakov's operas Princess Volkhova (1897-1898, State Russian Museum) and The Swan Princess (1900, State Tretyakov Gallery), played by Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, as well as images of elemental spirits of nature in the several variations of works on the theme ( Lilac (Siren), Pearl).

In his fascination with the world of fairy-tale heroines, Vrubel went beyond the bounds of the flat plane of the canvas, turning to sculpture and applied arts. In them he created theatrical portraits of his wife, but that is not all. He was drawn to heroic images of a dual nature that personified natural elements; in creating them, the artist strove to catch the moment of transformation, the incarnation of fragility and tragedy of the appearance of pure beauty in the world.