„Der letzte Tag von Pompeji (Gemälde)“ – Versionsunterschied

The Last Day of Pompeii is a large canvas painting by Russian artist Karl Bryullov produced in 1830-33.

Background

Briullov visited the site of Pompeii in 1828, making numerous sketches depicting the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.Vorlage:Citation required He also saw Giovanni Pacini's opera L'ultimo giorno di Pompei (1825) and was aware of Pliny the Younger's description of the disaster. These sources coalesced into the work known as The Last Day of Pompeii.

Subject

The topic is classical, but Bryullov's dramatic treatment and generous use of chiaroscuro render it farther advanced from the neoclassical style. In fact, The Last Day of Pompeii exemplifies many of the characteristics of Romanticism as it manifests itself in Russian art, including drama, realism tempered with idealism, increased interest in nature, and a zealous fondness for historical subjects.

Bryullov included a cameo of himself in the painting. His head and shoulders appear above the throng on the left side, a drawer of painting supplies balanced on his head.

Reception

The completed canvas was exhibited in Rome to rapturous reviews of critics and thereafter transported to Paris to be displayed in the Louvre. The first Russian artwork to cause such an interest abroad, it gave birth to an anthologic poem by Alexander Pushkin, and inspired the hugely successful novel The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who saw it in Rome. Another British author, Sir Walter Scott declared that it was not an ordinary painting but an epic in colours.

The commissioner, Prince Anatole Demidov, donated the painting to Nicholas I of Russia who displayed it at the Imperial Academy of Arts for the instruction of young painters. To present the painting to a wider audience the canvas was transferred to the Russian Museum for the museum's opening in 1895.

Gallery

• 
  Displayed alongside Moses and the Brazen Serpent (1840) by Feodor Bruni in 1856.
• 
  Countess Yuliya Samoylova was the model for this figure.
• 
  Statues topple from their pedestals.

References and sources

References

Sources

• Vorlage:Ru icon Верещагина А.Г. Художник. Время. История. Очерки русской исторической живописи XVIII — начала XX века. – М.: Искусство, 1973. С. 30—32.