Many subjects of popular prints / coloured woodcuts were of foreign origin, but they got ingrained in Russian folklore, appearing in folk poems or fairy tales, or even turning into well-established allegorical expressions. Bova Korolevich was one of those heroes.

Bova Korolevich beating Polkan is a frequent subject of folk prints. ‘The Strong and Brave Bova Korolevich Kills Polkan the Bogatyr’ is a lithographically printed coloured woodcut.

Heroic tales about the exploits of Bova Korolevich are likely to have come from Italy. The plot of the tale is very complex; it has a lot of intrigue, enmity, and feats. Bogatyr Bova managed to defeat all the armies sent after him.

There are military tents in the background of the picture. Polkan went up against Bova, ripping an oak from the ground, like a real Russian bogatyr. But he was half-man and half-horse. And Bova defeated him. But Polkan offered friendship, alliance, and his help, and Bova agreed. Together they defeated many enemies. Polkan saved Bova’s wife and children from death, but died from the claws of a lion who attacked them.

A. Pushkin knew this tale very well and used some names (Dodon) and plot lines in his tales (“The Tale of Tsar Saltan”).

Popular prints (in russian — ‘lubok’) are folk pictures printed on cheap paper from wooden or copper plates prior to the 1850’s, and afterwards mostly using the lithographic and chromolithographic technique.

Popular prints were a very popular decoration of peasant, merchant and petty-bourgeois houses.

Lithography (engraving on stone) is a cheaper and more advanced technology of making popular prints than xylography (engraving on wood) or engraving on copper.

Popular prints were often coloured. Some villages had special teams of women and children who unpretentiously painted black-and-white pictures in four colours. It was an important source of income for many people.

Popular fairy-tale prints were always divided into two parts: the upper one had an image; the lower one included some text in the frame. Both the parts had been engraved on the same plate.

Popular prints were of religious and secular content. Since 1850, they started to be censored. Unprintable and vulgar vocabulary had been used in the pictures far too often.

The text narrated as briefly as possible about the particular episode or conveyed in brief the meaning of the fairy tale or parable. There were few literate people among the commoners, so the picture had to be as clear as possible.