Olives at the cemetery in Albano. A young month by Alexander Ivanov

The landscape is a finished painting, although Ivan used this as the sketch for the central part of the painting The Appearance of Christ to the people, depicting the branches of a tree above the head of John the Baptist.

The attention of the artist was attracted by several young olives looming against the backdrop of the distant plain. Thin-barbed, quaintly curved trees stand out clearly among shrubs and rusty land. Far away, on the horizon barely visible pale lilac strip of the sea. The picture and color of the landscape accurately convey the impression of a transitional moment in the life of nature, when a sickle of a young month is barely emerging on a bright, transparent sky, when the world already bathed in the daylight is still in a night stupor.

Ivanov, as a landscape painter, did not like fragmentary images, casual impressions from nature. He was attracted by nature, as a special whole world, full of tranquility and majestic beauty.

In understanding the landscape, the artist disagreed with NV Gogol. Gogol was dissatisfied when in the landscape “everything is clearly disassembled, read by the master, and the viewer follows it in his wake”. Romantic mess was closer to him. “I would join a tree with a tree, mix up branches, throw out a light where no one expects it,” the writer said.