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".