Stars in his eyes

Moscow — THERE'S snow on the cupola, sunlight in the brandy and a lot of talk about metaphor, mythical symbolism and how the rich will pay incredible amounts of money for a portrait. With a prolific brush and a deft understanding of ego, Nikas Safronov, who flutters like a designer moth amid canvases in his studio, is Russia's artist to the powerful.

He recasts his country's tycoons and politicians as dukes, earls and other nobility from the past. The reigning figure, naturally, is Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, painted on a steed and resembling Napoleon charging into battle. The Kremlin leader has also been reincarnated as the pope and a shrewd-eyed Francis I, a 16th century French monarch and benefactor of the arts.

The new oligarchs and their wives love Safronov. He gives them the majesty they covet, a sense of hovering above the masses in ruffles and trinkets and gold-flecked clothes. But in their studied regality they seem weighted by something darker, as if they understand the facade too well and know that at any moment it all could shatter. Others, of course, are bored millionaires looking for something new to hang in the dacha.

"Wealth elevates you and suddenly you are alone at the top and it's cold. There's an abyss in front of you and you wonder how to get back," said Safronov, as if passing along a status report on his nation's psyche or a script for "The Sopranos." "In Russia, the rich live with fear. They know that if you kill you can be killed. It's like a volcano and you don't know who will be in charge next."

This is no melodrama from a pessimist in an icy garret. Rich and politically connected, Safronov is like those he paints, gladly talking about himself, his visions, his art; his thoughts on women, dissidents, Chinese businessmen and how one day, perhaps soon, he'd love to paint Al Pacino, after already having portrayed Madonna as a linen-draped virgin and George Clooney as a powder-wigged dauphin from a Voltaire scrapbook. Neither star sat for Safronov. That doesn't matter, though; he'll offer the portraits as gifts when he sees them.

'He knows nothing'

A trim man with shiny, shoulder-length hair and a meticulous beard with specks of gray, Safronov looks a bit like Barry Gibb during the "Saturday Night Fever" era. He's cordial and attentive; speaks just above a whisper and riffles through his canvases as if he's searching for a surprise.