Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov (Russian: Ви́ктор Миха́йлович Васнецо́в; Lop'jal near Vyatka, May 15 (N.S.), 1848 — Moscow, July 23, 1926) was a Russian artist who specialized in mythological and historical subjects. He was described as co-founder of folklorist/romantic modernism in the Russian painting and a key figure of the revivalist movement in Russian art.

Viktor Vasnetsov was born in a remote village Lopyal of Vyatka guberniya in 1848, the second of the six children. His father Mikhail Vasilievich Vasnetsov, a village priest, was a well-educated 'philosophy-inclined' man interested in natural science, astronomy and painting. His grandfather was an icon painter. Two of Mikhail Vasnetsov's three sons, Viktor and Apollinary, became remarkable painters, the third one becoming a schoolteacher. It was in Lopyal that Viktor started to paint, mostly landscapce and village life scenes. Recalling his childhood in a letter to Vladimir Stasov, Vasnetsov remarked that he "had lived with peasant children and liked them not as a narodnik but as a friend".

Alexander Tikhonovich Gretchaninov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ти́хонович Гречани́нов; IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɡrʲɪt͡ɕɐˈnʲinəf]; 25 October [O.S. 13 October] 1864, Kaluga – 3 January 1956, New York City) was a Russian Romantic composer.

Gretchaninov started his musical studies rather late because his father, a businessman, had expected the boy to take over the family firm. Gretchaninov himself related that he did not see a piano until he was 14 and began his studies at the Moscow Conservatory in 1881 against his father's wishes and without his knowledge. His main teachers there were Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky. In the late 1880s, after a quarrel with Arensky, he moved to St. Petersburg where he studied composition and orchestration with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov until 1893. Rimsky-Korsakov immediately recognized Gretchaninov's extraordinary musical imagination and talent and gave him much extra time as well as considerable financial help. This allowed the young man, whose parents were not supporting him, to survive. Out of this came an important friendship, which only ended in 1908 with Rimsky's death. As such, it is not surprising that Rimsky's influence can be heard in Gretchaninov’s early works, such as his String Quartet No.1, a prize-winning composition.

Reinhold Glière (11 January 1875 [O.S. 30 December 1874] – 23 June 1956) was a Russian and Soviet composer of German–Polish descent.

His name has appeared in different forms:

Glière was born in Kiev, Russian Empire. He was the second son of the wind instrument maker Ernst Moritz Glier (1834–1896) from Saxony (Klingenthal), who emigrated to the Russian Empire and married Józefa (Josephine) Korczak (1849–1935), the daughter of his master, from Warsaw, Poland. His original name, as given in his baptism certificate, was Reinhold Ernest Glier. About 1900 he changed the spelling and pronunciation of his surname to Glière, which gave rise to the legend, stated by Leonid Sabaneyev for the first time (1927), of his French or Belgian descent.

Ilya Muromets (Russian: Илья́ Му́ромец; Ukrainian: Ілля́ Му́ромець, literally Elijah of Murom) is a Kievan Rus' epic hero. He is celebrated in numerous byliny (folk epic poems). Along with Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich he is regarded as the greatest of all the legendary bogatyrs (i.e., medieval knights-errant of Kievan Rus). (The three of them are represented together in Vasnetsov's famous painting Warriors, as illustrated below.)

Although Ilya's adventures are mostly a matter of epic fiction, he is believed to have been an historical person: a 12th century warrior and, in older age^{[clarification needed]}, a monk named Ilya Pechorsky. Ilya is beatified as a minor Saint of the Orthodox Church. His relics are preserved in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.

According to legends, Ilya, the son of a farmer, was born in the village of Karacharovo, near Murom. He suffered serious illness in his youth and was unable to walk until the age of 33 (till then he could only lie on a Russian oven), when he was miraculously healed by two pilgrims. He was then given super-human strength by a dying knight, Svyatogor, and set out to liberate the city of Kiev from Idolishche to serve Prince Vladimir the Fair Sun (Vladimir Krasnoye Solnyshko). Along the way he single-handedly defended the city of Chernigov from nomadic invasion (possibly by Polovtsi) and was offered knighthood by the local ruler, but Ilya declined to stay. In the forests of Bryansk he then killed the forest-dwelling monster Nightingale the Robber (Solovei-Razboinik), who could murder travellers with his powerful whistle.