The book of literary critic and cultural historian Vladimir Ilyich Porudominsky tells about the depths hidden in the portraits of great people painted by true masters of canvas and brush. The writer convinces us that the portraits of real artists show the essence of the life and fate of outstanding people of the era. In the paintings, two talents meet and touch, two wonderful creators who determined and indicated the further path of development of Russian progressive culture with their lives. In the book, we see the fate of writers and poets of the Russian land: A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Nekrasov, L.N. Tolstoy, - portraits by V.A. Tropinin, F.A. Moller, V.G. Perov, I.N. Kramsky who are looking at us from the distant past