Karl Bryullov lived in Italy for more than four years before reaching Pompeii in 1827. At that time he was looking for a subject for a big picture on historical theme. What he saw amazed the artist. It took him six years to collect material and write an epic canvas with an area of almost 30 m2.
In the picture, people of different sex and age, occupation and faith, caught in a catastrophe, are rushing about. However, in the motley crowd you can see four identical faces...
In the same 1827, Bryullov met the woman of his life - Countess Yulia Samoilova. After parting ways with her husband, a young aristocrat, a former lady-in-waiting who loved a bohemian lifestyle, moved to Italy, where morals are freer. Both the countess and the artist had a reputation for heartthrobs. Their relationship remained free, but long, and friendship continued until Bryullov's death. “Nothing was done according to the rules between me and Karl”, - Samoilova subsequently wrote to his brother Alexander.
Julia with her Mediterranean appearance (there were rumors that the woman's father was the Italian Count Litta, her mother's stepfather) was an ideal for Bryullov, moreover, as if created for an ancient plot. The artist painted several portraits of the countess and "gave" her face to the four heroines of the painting, which became his most famous creation. In The Last Day of Pompeii, Bryullov wanted to show the beauty of a person even in a desperate situation, and Yulia Samoilova was for him a perfect example of this beauty in the real world.
1 Julia Samoilova. The researcher Erich Hollerbach noted that heroines similar to each other " last day Pompeii”, despite social differences, look like representatives of one big family, as if the disaster brought together and equalized all the townspeople.
2 Street. “I took this scenery from nature, without retreating at all and without adding, standing with my back to the city gates in order to see part of Vesuvius as the main reason”, - Bryullov explained in a letter to his brother the choice of scene. This is already a suburb, the so-called Road of the Tombs, leading from the Herculaneum gates of Pompeii to Naples. Here were the tombs of noble citizens and temples. The artist sketched the location of the buildings during the excavations.
3 Woman with daughters. According to Bryullov, he saw one female and two children's skeletons, covered in these positions with volcanic ash, at excavations. The artist could associate a mother with two daughters with Yulia Samoilova, who, having no children of her own, took up two girls, relatives of friends, to raise. By the way, the father of the youngest of them, the composer Giovanni Pacini, wrote the opera The Last Day of Pompeii in 1825, and the fashionable production became one of the sources of inspiration for Bryullov.
4 Christian priest. In the first century of Christianity, a minister of the new faith could have been in Pompeii; in the picture he is easily recognizable by the cross, liturgical utensils - a censer and a chalice - and a scroll with a sacred text. The wearing of pectoral and pectoral crosses in the 1st century has not been confirmed archaeologically.
5 Pagan Priest. The status of the character is indicated by cult objects in his hands and a headband - infula. Bryullov's contemporaries reproached him for not bringing to the fore the opposition of Christianity to paganism, but the artist did not have such a goal.
8 Artist. Judging by the number of frescoes on the walls of Pompeii, the profession of a painter was in demand in the city. As an ancient painter, running next to a girl with the appearance of Countess Julia, Bryullov portrayed himself - this was often done by Renaissance masters, whose work he studied in Italy.
9 The woman who fell from the chariot. According to art historian Galina Leontyeva, the pompeian lying on the pavement symbolizes the death of the ancient world, for which the artists of classicism yearned.
10 items, which fell out of the box, as well as other objects and decorations in the picture, were copied by Bryullov from bronze and silver mirrors found by archaeologists, keys, lamps filled with olive oil, vases, bracelets and necklaces that belonged to the inhabitants of Pompeii of the 1st century AD. e.
11 Warrior and boy. As conceived by the artist, these are two brothers rescuing a sick old father.
12 Pliny the Younger. The ancient Roman prose writer, who witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius, described it in detail in two letters to the historian Tacitus.
13 Mother of Pliny the Younger. Bryullov placed the scene with Pliny on the canvas “as an example of childish and maternal love,” despite the fact that the disaster caught the writer and his family in another city - Misena (about 25 km from Vesuvius and about 30 km from Pompeii). Pliny recalled how he and his mother got out of Mizenum at the height of the earthquake, and a cloud of volcanic ash was approaching the city. It was difficult for an elderly woman to escape, and she, not wanting to cause the death of her 18-year-old son, persuaded her to leave her. “I answered that I would be saved only with her; I take her by the arm and make her take a step”, said Pliny. Both survived.
14 Goldfinch. During a volcanic eruption, birds died on the fly.
15 Newlyweds. According to the ancient Roman tradition, the heads of the newlyweds were decorated with wreaths of flowers. Flammey fell from the girl's head - the traditional cover of the ancient Roman bride from a thin yellow-orange fabric.
16 Tomb of Skaurus. Building from the Road of the Tombs, the resting place of Aulus Umbritius Scaurus the Younger. The tombs of the ancient Romans were usually built outside the city on both sides of the road. Scaurus the Younger during his lifetime held the position of duumvir, that is, he was at the head of the city government, and for his merits he was even awarded a monument in the forum. This citizen was the son of a wealthy trader in garum fish sauce (Pompeii was famous for it throughout the empire).
17 Demolition of buildings. Seismologists, by the nature of the destruction of the buildings depicted in the picture, determined the intensity of the earthquake "according to Bryullov" - eight points.
18 Vesuvius. The eruption that occurred on August 24-25, 79 AD. e., destroyed several cities of the Roman Empire, located at the foot of the volcano. Of the 20-30 thousand inhabitants of Pompeii, about two thousand did not escape, judging by the remains found.
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ARTIST
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The Last Day of Pompeii is a painting painted in 1833. Work on it has been carried out since 1830, although Bryullov took breaks while writing. It was necessary to supervise other projects that could not exist without the attention of the artist. It was required to personally launch some projects, thereby giving them a new life.
History of creation
The picture was painted during the Italian trip of the master. Bryullov had to gain experience from his Western colleagues, especially since he had long been invited to visit exhibitions in Italy. See the conditions in which the masters work and live. And how exactly they try to convey the final thoughts to the public.
Bryullov received money for a trip from Russian Empire. The authorities were not opposed to supporting the novice artist, especially since the Academy of Arts personally vouched for him. It was only necessary to give out the agreed amount of money, so that thanks to her, the young man could live. Working on paintings, not thinking about where to get the money from.
Studying the history of Italy, Karl really liked the plot of the fall of a developed city at the hands of the elements. In this event, the creator saw a sacred regularity that will comprehend every person to a certain extent. Sooner or later, nature will take its toll anyway.
The painting was awarded various awards. The Italians enthusiastically looked at the genius who managed to convey an interesting event of the past into new form. Bryullov will receive recognition abroad, and then returned to his home.
Writing style
The picture was painted in four stages. At the same time, the last stage, in fact, lasted several years. Visually, the picture can be divided into two parts - foreground and background. Since Bryullov came from a standard school of fine arts, in this aspect he did not change anything at all for his personal goals. The man simply followed the established logic, trying to take it on faith. It was necessary to follow the canons so that the paintings could be exhibited in mass world painting.
The first stage was difficult, however, it is with him that the picture visually begins. These are people who want to escape the horror of nature, and survive this night. If you look at their detail, you can imagine how much time it took to create such images. Even the shadows on the body are drawn to the smallest detail. Detailing was only available because Bryullov had access to unlimited resources.
With the help of a double stroke, and retouching by overlaying color on top of an existing layer, the artist could safely select small objects, building a transition of the light gamut around them. The second stage was the depiction of the volcano, which is visible in the distance. It was necessary to make the most intuitive entry into the picture, so that at first people could be seen in the center, that in agony they were trying to escape from the city. And after the reason why.
The third stage is the sky, with an unusually bright transition from warm colors to cold and lifeless ones. Thus, Bryullov noted what exactly and why happened on that fateful day for Italy. On top of the picture was varnished with a soft layer of alcohol, so that the paint could not suffer from the heat at the exhibition.
Plot
The painting depicts the darkest hour in the history of the city of Pompeii. The day when the huge shopping center of Italy abruptly disappeared from the face of the earth. The reason was precisely the volcano, which until that time was sleeping peacefully, and did not disturb the inhabitants. But at one point in time, the rules of the game changed. And I had to die under a layer of thick lava that buried people in those positions that they had at the time of death. One of the largest natural disasters of the ancient world.
Karl Bryullov was so carried away by the tragedy of the city destroyed by Vesuvius that he personally participated in the excavations of Pompeii, and later carefully worked on the picture: instead of the three years indicated in the order of the young philanthropist Anatoly Demidov, the artist painted the picture for six whole years.
(About imitation of Raphael, plot parallels with The Bronze Horseman, tours of the work in Europe and fashion for the tragedy of Pompeii among artists.)
The eruption of Vesuvius on August 24-25 in 79 AD was the largest cataclysm ancient world. On that last day, several coastal cities lost about 5,000 people.
This story is especially well known to us from the painting by Karl Bryullov, which can be seen in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
In 1834, the "presentation" of the painting took place in St. Petersburg. The poet Yevgeny Boratynsky wrote the lines: "The last day of Pompeii became the first day for the Russian brush!" The picture struck Pushkin and Gogol. Gogol captured in his inspirational article on the painting the secret of its popularity:
"His works are the first that can be understood (although not equally) by an artist who has a higher development of taste, and who does not know what art is."
Indeed, a work of genius is understandable to everyone, and at the same time, a more developed person will discover in it still other planes of a different level.
Pushkin wrote poetry and even sketched a part of the painting's composition in the margins.
Vesuvius zev opened - smoke gushed in a club - flame
Widely developed like a battle banner.
The earth worries - from staggering columns
Idols are falling! A people driven by fear
Under the stone rain, under the inflamed ashes,
Crowds, old and young, run out of the city (III, 332).
This is brief retelling paintings, multi-figured and complex compositionally. Not a small piece at all. In those days, it was even the largest picture, which already amazed contemporaries: the scale of the picture, correlated with the scale of the disaster.
Our memory cannot absorb everything, its possibilities are not unlimited. Such a picture can be viewed more than once and every time you see something else.
What did Pushkin single out and remember? The researcher of his work, Yuri Lotman, identified three main thoughts: "the uprising of the elements - the statues are set in motion - the people (people) as a victim of a disaster". And he made a very reasonable conclusion:
Pushkin has just finished his " Bronze Horseman and saw what was close to him at that moment.
Indeed, a similar plot: the element (flood) is raging, the monument comes to life, frightened Eugene runs from the elements and the monument.
Lotman also writes about the direction of Pushkin's gaze:
"Comparison of the text with Bryullov's canvas reveals that Pushkin's gaze slides diagonally from the upper right corner to the lower left. This corresponds to the main compositional axis of the picture."
The researcher of diagonal compositions, artist and art theorist N. Tarabukin wrote:
Indeed, we are unusually captivated by what is happening. Bryullov managed to make the viewer involved in the events as much as possible. There is a presence effect.
Karl Bryullov graduated from the Academy of Arts in 1823 with a gold medal. By tradition, gold medalists went to Italy for an internship. There, Bryullov visits the workshop of an Italian artist and for 4 years copies Raphael's "Athenian School", and all 50 figures are life-size. At this time, Bryullov is visited by the writer Stendhal.
There is no doubt that Bryullov learned a lot from Raphael - the ability to organize a large canvas.
Bryullov got to Pompeii in 1827 together with the countess Maria Grigorievna Razumovskaya. She became the first customer of the painting. However, the rights to the paintings are bought by a sixteen-year-old Anatoly Nikolaevich Demidov, owner of the Ural mining plants, rich man and philanthropist. He had a net annual income of two million rubles.
Nikolai Demidov, father, recently deceased, was a Russian envoy and sponsored excavations in Florence in the Forum and the Capitol. Demidov will later present the painting to Nicholas the First, who will donate it to the Academy of Arts, from where it will go to the Russian Museum.
Demidov signed a contract with Bryullov for a fixed period and tried to adjust the artist, but he conceived a grandiose idea and in total the work on the painting took 6 years. Bryullov makes many sketches and collects material.
Bryullov was so carried away that he himself participated in the excavations. It must be said that the excavations began formally on October 22, 1738 by decree of the Neapolitan king Charles III, they were carried out by an engineer from Andalusia, Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre, with 12 workers (and this was the first archaeological systematic excavation in history when detailed records were made of everything that was found, before that there were mainly pirate methods when precious objects were snatched out, and the rest could be barbarously destroyed).
By the time Bryullov appeared, Herculaneum and Pompeii had already become not only a place of excavations, but also a place of pilgrimage for tourists. In addition, Bryullov was inspired by Paccini's opera The Last Day of Pompeii, which he saw in Italy. It is known that he dressed sitters in costumes for the play. (Gogol, by the way, compared the picture with an opera, apparently felt the "theatricality" of the mise-en-scene. She definitely lacks musical accompaniment in the spirit of "Carmina Burana".)
So, after a long work with sketches, Bryullov painted a picture and already in Italy it aroused tremendous interest. Demidov decided to take her to Paris to the Salon, where she also received gold medal. In addition, she exhibited in Milan and London. The writer saw the painting in London Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who later wrote his novel The Last Days of Pompeii under the impression of the canvas.
It is interesting to compare the two moments of the interpretation of the plot. With Bryullov, we clearly see all the action, somewhere nearby there is fire and smoke, but in the foreground there is a clear image of the characters. When panic and mass exodus had already begun, the city was in a fair amount of smoke from the ashes. The artist's rockfall is depicted as a small Petersburg rain and pebbles scattered along the sidewalk. People are more likely to run from the fire. In fact, the city was already shrouded in smog, it was impossible to breathe...
In Bulwer-Lytton's novel, the heroes, a couple in love, are saved by a slave, blind from birth. Since she is blind, she easily finds her way in the dark. Heroes are saved and accept Christianity.
Were there Christians in Pompeii? At that time they were persecuted and it is not known whether the new faith reached the provincial resort. However, Bryullov also contrasts the Christian faith with the pagan faith and the death of the pagans. In the left corner of the picture we see a group of an old man with a cross around his neck and women under his protection. The old man turned his gaze to heaven, to his God, perhaps he would save him.
By the way, Bryullov copied some of the figures from the figures from the excavations. By that time, they began to fill the voids with plaster and got quite real figures of the dead inhabitants.
Classicist teachers scolded Karl for his departure from the canons of classical painting. Karl tossed between the classics absorbed at the Academy with its ideally sublime principles and the new aesthetics of romanticism.
If you look at the picture, you can distinguish several groups and individual characters, each with its own history. Something was inspired by excavations, something by historical facts.
The artist himself is present in the picture, his self-portrait is recognizable, here he is young, he is about 30 years old, on his head he takes out the most necessary and expensive - a box of paints. This is a tribute to the tradition of Renaissance artists to paint their self-portrait in a painting.
The girl next to her carries a lamp.
The son who carries his father on himself is reminiscent of the classic story about Aeneas who carried his father out of the burning Troy.
With one piece of cloth, the artist unites a family fleeing disaster into a group. During the excavations, couples who embraced before death, children together with their parents, are especially touching.
The two figures, the son persuading his mother to get up and run on, are taken from the letters of Pliny the Younger.
Pliny the Younger turned out to be an eyewitness who left written evidence of the death of cities. There are two letters written by him to the historian Tacitus, in which he talks about the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder, a famous naturalist, and his own misadventures.
Gaius Pliny was only 17 years old, at the time of the disaster he was studying the history of Titus Livius in order to write an essay, and therefore refused to go with his uncle to watch the volcanic eruption. Pliny the Elder was then an admiral of the local fleet, a position that he received for his scientific merits was an easy one. Curiosity killed him, in addition, a certain Rektsina sent him a letter asking for help. The only way to escape from her villa was by sea. Pliny sailed past Herculaneum, people on the shore at that moment could still be saved, but he strove to see the eruption in all its glory as soon as possible. Then the ships in the smoke with difficulty found their way to Stabia, where Pliny spent the night, but the next day he died, inhaling the sulfur-poisoned air.
Guy Pliny, who remained in Mizena, 30 kilometers from Pompeii, was forced to flee, as the disaster reached him and his mother.
Painting by a Swiss artist Angelica Kaufmann just shows this moment. A Spanish friend persuades Guy and his mother to run away, but they hesitate, thinking to wait for their uncle to return. The mother in the picture is not at all weak, but quite young.
They run, the mother asks her to leave and escape alone, but Guy helps her go on. Fortunately, they are saved.
Pliny described the horror of the disaster and described the type of eruption, after which it began to be called "Plinian". He saw the eruption from afar:
“The cloud (those who looked from afar could not determine which mountain it arose over; that it was Vesuvius, they recognized later), in its form most of all resembled a pine tree: it was as if a tall trunk rose upwards and from it branches seemed to diverge in all directions. I think that it was thrown out by a current of air, but then the current weakened and the cloud, due to its own gravity, began to diverge in width; in places it was bright white, in places dirty spots, as if from earth and ash raised upward.
The inhabitants of Pompeii had already experienced a volcanic eruption 15 years before, but did not draw conclusions. Blame - seductive sea coast and fertile land. Every gardener knows how well a crop grows on ashes. Mankind still believes in "maybe it will carry over."
Vesuvius and after that woke up more than once, almost once every 20 years. Many drawings of eruptions from different centuries have been preserved.
The last one, in 1944, was quite large-scale, at that time the American army was in Naples, the soldiers helped during the disaster. It is not known when and what will be the next.
On the Italian website, the zones of possible victims during the eruption are marked and it is easy to see that the wind rose is taken into account.
It was this that particularly affected the death of cities, the wind carried a suspension of ejected particles towards the southeast, just to the cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabia and several other small villas and villages. During the day they were under a multi-meter layer of ash, but before that, many people died from a rockfall, burned alive, died of suffocation. A slight shaking did not suggest an impending catastrophe, even when stones were already falling from the sky, many preferred to pray to the gods and hide in houses, where they were then walled up alive with a layer of ash.
Gaius Pliny, who survived all this in a light version in Mezima, describes what happened:
“It’s already the first hour of the day, and the light is wrong, as if sick. The houses around are shaking; it’s very scary in the open narrow area; they’re about to collapse. to our own; from fright it seems reasonable; we are crushed and pushed in this crowd of people leaving. Having left the city, we stop. How amazing and how much terrible we have experienced! The carts that were ordered to accompany us were thrown in different directions on a completely level place; despite on the stones laid, they could not stand in the same place. We saw how the sea retreats; the earth, shaking, seemed to push it away. The shore was clearly moving forward; many marine animals were stuck in the dry sand. On the other side, the terrible black a cloud that was broken in different places by running fiery zigzags; it opened up in wide blazing bands, similar to lightning, but larger.
The agony of those whose brains exploded from the heat, their lungs turned into cement, and their teeth and bones decayed, we cannot even imagine.
K. P. Bryullov
The last day of Pompeii. 1830-1833
Canvas, oil. 465.5 × 651 cm
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
The Last Day of Pompeii is a painting by Karl Pavlovich Bryullov, written in 1830-1833. The painting was an unprecedented success in Italy, was awarded a gold medal in Paris, and in 1834 was delivered to St. Petersburg.
For the first time, Karl Bryullov visited Naples and Vesuvius in July 1827, in the fourth year of his stay in Italy. He did not have a specific purpose of travel, but there were several reasons for undertaking this trip. In 1824, the painter's brother, Alexander Bryullov, visited Pompeii and, despite the restraint of his nature, enthusiastically spoke about his impressions. The second reason for visiting was hot summer months and almost always the accompanying outbreaks of fever in Rome. The third reason was the recently rapidly emerging friendship with Princess Yulia Samoilova, who was also on her way to Naples.
The spectacle of the dead city stunned Bryullov. He stayed in it for four days, going around all the nooks and crannies more than once. “Going to Naples that summer, neither Bryullov himself nor his companion knew that this unexpected journey would lead the artist to the highest pinnacle of his work — the creation of the monumental historical canvas The Last Day of Pompeii,” writes art critic Galina Leontyeva.
In 1828, during his next visit to Pompeii, Bryullov made many sketches for a future painting about the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. e. and the destruction of this city. The canvas was exhibited in Rome, where it received enthusiastic reviews from critics, and forwarded to the Louvre in Paris. This work was the first painting by the artist that aroused such interest abroad. Walter Scott called the picture "unusual, epic."
The classical theme, thanks to the artistic vision of Bryullov and the abundant play of chiaroscuro, resulted in a work that is several steps ahead of the neoclassical style. "The Last Day of Pompeii" perfectly characterizes classicism in Russian painting, mixed with idealism, an increased interest in the open air and a passionate love of that time for such historical subjects. The image of the artist in the left corner of the picture is a self-portrait of the author.
(detail)
The canvas also depicts Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova three times - a woman with a jug on her head, standing on a dais on the left side of the canvas; a woman who has crashed to death, sprawled on the pavement, and next to her a living child (both, presumably, were thrown out of a broken chariot) - in the center of the canvas; and a mother attracting her daughters to her, in the left corner of the picture.
(detail) 
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In 1834, the painting "The Last Day of Pompeii" was sent to St. Petersburg. Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev said that this picture was the glory of Russia and Italy. E. A. Baratynsky composed a famous aphorism on this occasion: “The last day of Pompeii became the first day for the Russian brush!”. A. S. Pushkin also responded with a poem: “Idols are falling! A people driven by fear…” (this line was banned by censors). In Russia, Bryullov's canvas was perceived not as a compromise, but as an exclusively innovative work.
Anatoly Demidov presented the painting to Nicholas I, who exhibited it at the Academy of Arts as a guide for beginner painters. After the opening of the Russian Museum in 1895, the canvas moved there, and the general public gained access to it.
1833 Oil on canvas. 456.5 x 651cm
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Bryullov's painting can be called complete, universal
creation. It contained everything.
Nikolay Gogol.
On the night of August 24-25, 79 AD. e. Vesuvius eruption The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia were destroyed. In 1833 Karl Bryullov wrote his famous painting "The last day of Pompeii".
It is difficult to name a picture that would have enjoyed the same success with contemporaries as The Last Day of Pompeii. As soon as the canvas was completed, the Roman workshop of Karl Bryullov was subjected to a real siege. "ATall Rome flocked to see my picture", - wrote the artist. Exhibited in 1833 in Milan"Pompeii" literally shocked the audience. Laudatory reviews were full of newspapers and magazines,Bryullov was called the revived Titian, the second Michelangelo, the new Raphael...
In honor of the Russian artist, dinners and receptions were arranged, poems were dedicated to him. As soon as Bryullov appeared in the theater, the hall exploded with applause. The painter was recognized on the streets, showered with flowers, and sometimes the honors ended with the fact that fans with songs carried him in their arms.
In 1834 a painting, optionalcustomer, industrialist A.N. Demidov, was exhibited at the Paris Salon. The reaction of the public here was not as hot as in Italy (envy! - the Russians explained), but "Pompeii" was awarded the gold medal of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
It is hard to imagine the enthusiasm and patriotic enthusiasm with which the picture was received in St. Petersburg: thanks to Bryullov, Russian painting ceased to be a diligent student of the great Italians and created a work that delighted Europe!The painting was donated Demidov Nicholas I , who briefly placed it in the Imperial Hermitage, and then presented it academies arts.
According to the memoirs of a contemporary, "crowds of visitors, one might say, burst into the halls of the Academy to look at Pompeii." They talked about the masterpiece in the salons, shared opinions in private correspondence, made notes in diaries. The honorary nickname "Charlemagne" was established for Bryullov.
Impressed by the picture, Pushkin wrote a six-line:
“Vesuvius zev opened - smoke gushed in a club - flame
Widely developed like a battle banner.
The earth is worried - from the staggering columns
Idols are falling! A people driven by fear
Under the stone rain, under the inflamed ashes,
Crowds, old and young, run out of the city.
Gogol devoted a remarkably profound article to The Last Day of Pompeii, and the poet Yevgeny Baratynsky expressed the general jubilation in a well-known impromptu:
«
You brought peaceful trophies
With you in the paternal shade,
And became "The Last Day of Pompeii"
For the Russian brush, the first day!
Immoderate enthusiasm has long subsided, but even today Bryullov's painting makes a strong impression, going beyond the limits of those sensations that painting, even very good, usually evokes in us. What's the matter here?
"Street of the Tombs" In the background is the Herculaneus Gate.
Photo of the second half of the 19th century.
Since excavations began in Pompeii in the mid-18th century, interest in this city, which was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, has been on the rise. e., did not fade away. Europeans flocked to Pompeii to wander through the ruins freed from the layer of petrified volcanic ash, admire the frescoes, sculptures, mosaics, marvel at the unexpected finds of archaeologists. The excavations attracted artists and architects, etchings with views of Pompeii were in great vogue.
Bryullov , who first visited the excavations in 1827, very accurately conveyedfeeling of empathy for the events of two thousand years ago, which covers anyone who comes to Pompeii:“The sight of these ruins involuntarily made me go back to a time when these walls were still inhabited /…/. You can’t go through these ruins without feeling some completely new feeling in yourself, making you forget everything, except for the terrible incident with this city.
To express this "new feeling", to create a new image of antiquity - not an abstract museum, but a holistic and full-blooded one, the artist strove in his picture. He got used to the era with the meticulousness and care of an archaeologist: out of more than five years, it took only 11 months to create the canvas itself with an area of 30 square meters, the rest of the time was taken up by preparatory work.
“I took this scenery all from nature, without retreating at all and without adding, standing with my back to the city gates in order to see part of Vesuvius as the main reason,” Bryullov shared in one of his letters.Pompeii had eight gates, butfurther the artist mentioned “the stairs leading to Sepolcri Sc au ro "- the monumental tomb of the eminent citizen Skavr, and this gives us the opportunity to accurately establish the scene chosen by Bryullov. It's about the Herculanean Gates of Pompeii ( Porto di Ercolano ), behind which, already outside the city, began the "Street of Tombs" ( Via dei Sepolcri) - a cemetery with magnificent tombs and temples. This part of Pompeii was in the 1820s. already well cleared, which allowed the painter to reconstruct architecture on canvas with maximum accuracy.
Tomb of Skaurus. Reconstruction of the 19th century
Recreating the picture of the eruption, Bryullov followed the famous messages of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus. The young Pliny survived the eruption in seaport Miseno, north of Pompeii, and described in detail what he saw: houses that seemed to have moved from their places, flames spread widely along the cone of the volcano, hot pieces of pumice stone falling from the sky, heavy rain of ash, black impenetrable darkness, fiery zigzags like giant lightning ... And all this Bryullov transferred to the canvas.
Seismologists are amazed at how convincingly he portrayed the earthquake: looking at collapsing houses, you can determine the direction and strength of the earthquake (8 points). Volcanologists note that the eruption of Vesuvius was written with all possible accuracy for that time. Historians argue that Bryullov's painting can be used to study ancient Roman culture.
In order to reliably capture the world of ancient Pompeii destroyed by the catastrophe, Bryullov took objects and remains of bodies found during excavations as samples, made countless sketches in the archaeological museum of Naples. The method of restoring the death poses of the dead by pouring lime into the voids formed from the bodies was invented only in 1870, but even during the creation of the picture, the skeletons found in the petrified ashes testified to the last convulsions and gestures of the victims. Mother hugging two daughters; a young woman who was crushed to death when she fell from a chariot that ran into a cobblestone, turned out of the pavement by an earthquake; people on the steps of the tomb of Skaurus, protecting their heads from rockfall with stools and dishes - all this is not a figment of the painter's fantasy, but an artistically recreated reality.
On the canvas, we see characters endowed with portrait features of the author himself and his beloved, Countess Yulia Samoilova. Bryullov portrayed himself as an artist carrying a box of brushes and paints on his head. The beautiful features of Julia are recognized four times in the picture: a girl with a vessel on her head, a mother hugging her daughters, a woman clutching a baby to her chest, a noble Pompeian who fell from a broken chariot. A self-portrait and portraits of a girlfriend are the best evidence that in his penetration into the past, Bryullov really became related to the event, creating a “presence effect” for the viewer, making him, as it were, a participant in what is happening.
Fragment of the picture:
Bryullov's self-portraitand a portrait of Yulia Samoilova.
Fragment of the picture:
compositional "triangle" - a mother hugging her daughters.
Bryullov's painting pleased everyone - both strict academicians, zealots of the aesthetics of classicism, and those who valued novelty in art and for whom "Pompeii" became, according to Gogol, " bright resurrection painting".This novelty was brought to Europe by a fresh wind of romanticism. The dignity of Bryullov's painting is usually seen in the fact that the brilliant pupil of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts was open to new trends. At the same time, the classicist layer of the painting is often interpreted as a relic, an inevitable tribute to the artist's routine past. But it seems that another turn of the theme is also possible: the fusion of two “isms” turned out to be fruitful for the picture.
The unequal, fatal struggle of man with the elements - such is the romantic pathos of the picture. It is built on sharp contrasts of darkness and the disastrous light of the eruption, the inhuman power of soulless nature and the high intensity of human feelings.
But there is something else in the picture that opposes the chaos of the catastrophe: an unshakable core in a world shaking to its foundations. This core is the classical balance of the most complex composition, which saves the picture from the tragic sense of hopelessness. The composition, built according to the "recipes" of academicians - the "triangles" ridiculed by subsequent generations of painters, into which groups of people fit, balanced masses on the right and left - is read in the lively tense context of the picture in a completely different way than in dry and dead academic canvases.
Fragment of the picture: a young family.
In the foreground is a pavement damaged by an earthquake.
Fragment of the painting: dead Pompeian.
“The world is still harmonious in its foundations” - this feeling arises in the viewer subconsciously, partly contrary to what he sees on the canvas. The hopeful message of the artist is read not at the level of the plot of the picture, but at the level of its plastic solution.The violent romantic element is subdued by the classically perfect form, and in this unity of opposites lies another secret of the attractiveness of Bryullov's canvas.
The film tells many exciting and touching stories. Here is a young man in despair peering into the face of a girl in a wedding crown, who has lost consciousness or died. Here is a young man trying to convince an exhausted old woman of something. This couple is called “Pliny with his mother” (although, as we remember, Pliny the Younger was not in Pompeii, but in Miseno): in a letter to Tacitus, Pliny conveys his dispute with his mother, who urged her son to leave her and, without delay, run away, and he did not agree to leave the weak woman. A helmeted warrior and a boy are carrying a sick old man; a baby, miraculously surviving a fall from a chariot, embraces a dead mother; the young man raised his hand, as if to divert the blow of the elements from his family, the baby in the arms of his wife, with childish curiosity, reaches for the dead bird. People try to take away the most precious things with them: a pagan priest - a tripod, a Christian - a censer, an artist - brushes. The dead woman was carrying jewelry, which, useless, is now lying on the pavement.
Fragment of the painting: Pliny with his mother.
Fragment of the picture: earthquake - "idols fall."
Such a powerful plot load on the picture can be dangerous for painting, making the canvas a "story in pictures", but Bryullov's literary character and abundance of details do not destroy the artistic integrity of the picture. Why? We find the answer in the same article by Gogol, who compares Bryullov’s painting “in terms of its vastness and the combination of everything beautiful in itself with opera, if only opera is really a combination of the triple world of the arts: painting, poetry, music” (by poetry, Gogol obviously meant literature generally).
This feature of "Pompeii" can be described in one word - synthetic: the picture organically combines a dramatic plot, vivid entertainment and thematic polyphony, similar to music. (By the way, the theatrical basis of the painting had a real prototype - Giovanni Paccini's opera The Last Day of Pompeii, which during the years of the artist's work on the canvas was staged at the Neapolitan theater of San Carlo. Bryullov was well acquainted with the composer, listened to the opera several times and borrowed costumes for his sitters.)
William Turner. Vesuvius eruption. 1817
So, the picture resembles the final scene of a monumental opera performance: the most expressive scenery is in store for the finale, all storylines are connected, and musical themes are intertwined into a complex polyphonic whole. This picture-performance is similar to ancient tragedies, in which the contemplation of the nobility and courage of the heroes in the face of inexorable fate leads the viewer to catharsis - spiritual and moral enlightenment. The feeling of empathy that grips us in front of a picture is akin to what we experience in the theater, when what is happening on the stage touches us to tears, and these tears are heart-warming.
Gavin Hamilton. Neapolitans watch the eruption of Vesuvius.
Second floor. 18th century
Bryullov's painting is breathtakingly beautiful: a huge size - four and a half by six and a half meters, amazing "special effects", divinely built people, like antique statues come to life. “His figures are beautiful despite the horror of his position. They drown it out with their beauty," Gogol wrote, sensitively capturing another feature of the picture - the aestheticization of the catastrophe. The tragedy of the death of Pompeii and, more broadly, of the entire ancient civilization is presented to us as an incredibly beautiful sight. What are these contrasts of a black cloud pressing on the city, a shining flame on the slopes of a volcano and ruthlessly bright flashes of lightning, these statues captured at the very moment of falling and buildings collapsing like cardboard…
The perception of the eruptions of Vesuvius as grandiose performances staged by nature itself appeared already in the 18th century - even special machines were created to imitate the eruption. This "volcano fashion" was introduced by the British envoy to the Kingdom of Naples, Lord William Hamilton (husband of the legendary Emma, Admiral Nelson's girlfriend). A passionate volcanologist, he was literally in love with Vesuvius and even built a villa on the slope of the volcano to comfortably admire the eruptions. Observations of the volcano when it was active (several eruptions occurred in the 18-19 centuries), verbal descriptions and sketches of its changing beauties, climbing to the crater - these were the entertainments of the Neapolitan elite and visitors.
It is human nature to follow with bated breath the disastrous and beautiful games of nature, even if for this you have to balance at the mouth of an active volcano. This is the same “rapture in battle and the gloomy abyss on the edge”, which Pushkin wrote about in “Little Tragedies”, and which Bryullov conveyed in his canvas, which for almost two centuries has made us admire and be horrified.
Modern Pompeii
Marina Agranovskaya
