Arkady Aleksandrovich Plastov was born in 1893 into an artistically gifted family. His grandfather was a rural architect, engaged in icon painting. He passed on his love for art to his son, and through him to his grandson. For the latter, the most vivid memory of his youth was the arrival of a team of icon painters in the village, invited to renew the paintings of the local church, once decorated by his father and grandfather. The young man watched with admiration the mysterious preparations of the god-masons, who set up the scaffolding, ground the paints, boiled the drying oil, and then began to perform miracles with multi-colored brushes in the heights near the dome. “Once upon a time,” Plastov recalled, “my father and I went up there, into the skies... I barely recognized the familiar god of hosts with eyes the size of a plate and a face almost at our gates. As if enchanted, I watched with all my eyes as some handsome giant, winged, in a mantle the color of fire, was born among the pink clouds. "To be only a painter and nothing else!" - I whispered then with lips dry from excitement.”