Vrubel's Ascending Demon

Vrubel loved the Talashkino estate with all his heart, where he often stayed as a guest of the patroness, Princess Maria Tenisheva. It was there that he painted his picture “The Ascending Demon,” and it was there that the painting was lost for many years…

Elenа Schwartz, bringing her students on an excursion to Talashkino, accidentally discovers the body of a young man with a newspaper sheet in his mouth, rolled up like a cigarette. Soon it turns out that the murdered man was a restorer who had come to restore a temple. His grandfather was the well-known Soviet artist Alexander Tiunov—a graduate of the Talashkino school opened for peasant children by the owner of the estate…