After the demonstration of the painting, Nicholas I awarded Bryullov with a laurel wreath,
after which the artist was called "Charlemagne"
Fragment of the painting by Karl Bryullov (1799-1852) "The Last Day of Pompeii" (1830-1833)
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 painting: instead of three years indicated in the order of the young patron Anatoly Demidov, the artist painted the picture for six whole years. About the imitation of Raphael, plot parallels with The Bronze Horseman, tours of the work in Europe and the fashion for the tragedy of Pompeii among artists.
Before you start looking at the photos that the son took in Pompeii, it is worth understanding how it was.
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. Even now at modern man the word “death” immediately associatively requires the word “Pompeii”, and the phrase: “Yesterday I just had the death of Pompeii” is understandable and metaphorically indicates the scale of the trouble, even if it broke through the fan pipe and flooded the neighbors.
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. This picture is remembered, a kind of blockbuster, it is clear that at a time when there was no cinema, it made an indelible impression on the audience
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 opened the pharynx - the smoke gushed out in a club - the 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 (III, 332).
it brief retelling paintings, multi-figure and compositionally complex, not at all a small canvas, in those days it was even the most big 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 something else can be seen. 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 begin to move - the people (people) as a victim of a disaster." And he made a completely reasonable conclusion: Pushkin had 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: "The content of the picture, built compositionally along this diagonal, is often one or another demonstration procession." And further: "The viewer of the picture in this case takes a place, as it were, among the crowd depicted on the canvas."
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 Italian artist and for 4 years copies " the school of Athens» Raphael, and in life size all 50 figures. 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 came to Pompeii in 1827 together with Countess Maria Grigoryevna Razumovskaya. She became the first customer of the painting. However, the rights to the paintings are redeemed by sixteen-year-old Anatoly Nikolaevich Demidov, the owner of the Ural mining plants, a 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 these were the first archaeological systematic excavations in history, when detailed records were made of everything that was found, before that, there were mainly pirate methods, when precious items 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 misses musical accompaniment in the spirit of "Carmina Burana".
So, after a long sketching, 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 a gold medal. In addition, she exhibited in Milan and London. In London, the painting was seen by the writer 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 near the fire and smoke, but in the foreground there is a clear image of the characters. scattered on the pavement. 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.
The picture is familiar to me since childhood, once, back in art school we took it apart whole lesson, it was on the example of “The Last Day of Pompeii” that the teacher talked about the main painting techniques that the artist used. Indeed, it can serve as a textbook on painting, if you take it apart carefully. The artist uses color and light contrasts, skillfully unites groups of people. Although contemporaries-artists called her "scrambled eggs" because of bright colors, mostly a bright compositional center, we understand that Italy, with its bright natural colors, could not help but influence. Bryullov is considered the founder of the "Italian genre" in Russian painting.
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 Charles for deviating from the canons 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. His curiosity ruined him, in addition, a certain Rektsina sent him a letter asking for help, it was possible to escape from her villa only 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.
Gaius Pliny, who remained in Mizena, 30 kilometers from Pompeii, was forced to flee, since the disaster reached him and his mother.
The painting by the 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 some places it was a bright white color, in other places it was covered with dirty spots, as if from earth and ashes raised up.
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 blow 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.
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 approaching 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 is already the first hour of the day, and the light is wrong, as if sick. The houses around are shaking; in an open narrow area it is very scary; this is where they collapse. It was finally decided to leave the city; we are followed by a crowd of people who have lost their heads and prefer someone else's decision to their own; frightened, it seems reasonable; we are crushed and pushed in this crowd of departing. When we leave the city, we stop. How amazing and how terrible we have experienced! The wagons that were ordered to accompany us were thrown in different directions on a completely level ground; despite the stones placed, they could not stand in the same place. We have seen the sea recede; the earth, shaking, seemed to push him away. The coast was clearly moving forward; many marine animals stuck in dry sand. On the other hand, a terrible black cloud, which was broken through in different places by running fiery zigzags; it opened up in wide blazing stripes, similar to lightning, but large.
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.
How the catastrophe happened within one day can be seen in the BBC film, or briefly on this installation:
Or watch the movie "Pompeii", where also with the help of computer graphics recreated view of the city and large-scale apocalypse.
And we'll see what the archaeologists unearthed for long years excavations..
Almost 2,000 years ago, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed several ancient Roman settlements, including the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. "Futurist" presents a chronicle of the events of August 24-25, 79 AD.
The ancient Roman writer and lawyer Pliny the Younger said that this happened at the seventh hour after sunrise (at about noon) on August 24th. His mother pointed out to his uncle, Pliny the Elder, the cloud unusual sizes and form that arose at the top of the mountain. Pliny the Elder, who at that time was the commander of the Roman fleet, went to Miseni to observe a rare natural phenomenon. Over the next two days, 16 thousand inhabitants of the Roman settlements of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia died: their bodies were buried under a layer of ash, stones and pumice thrown out by the raging volcano Vesuvius.
Casts of bodies found during excavations are now on display inside the Baths of Stabian at the archaeological site in Pompeii.
Since then, interest in Pompeii has not faded: modern researchers draw digital maps of the ruined city and go on archaeological expeditions to show us everyday life people who died at the foot of the volcano.
Letters from Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus, excavation results, and volcanological evidence allow scientists to reconstruct the eruption timeline.
The ruins of Pompeii with Vesuvius in the background
12:02 Pliny's mother tells his uncle Pliny the Elder about a strange cloud that has appeared over Vesuvius. Prior to this, for several days the city was shaken by tremors, although this was uncharacteristic for the Campagna region. Pliny the Younger later describes this phenomenon as follows:
“a huge black cloud was rapidly advancing ... long, fantastic flames burst out of it every now and then, resembling flashes of lightning, only much larger” ...
Winds carry most of the ash to the southeast. The "Plinian phase" of the eruption begins.
13:00 To the east of the volcano, ash begins to fall. Pompeii is only six miles from Vesuvius.
14:00 Ash falls on Pompeii first, and then white pumice. The layer of volcanic sediment that covered the earth grows at a rate of 10-15 cm per hour. In the end, the thickness of the pumice layer will be 280 cm.
The Last Day of Pompeii, a painting by Karl Pavlovich Bryullov, written in 1830-1833.
17:00 Pompeii's roofs collapse under a mass of volcanic rainfall. Stones the size of a fist rain down on the city at a speed of 50 m/s. The sun is shrouded in an ashen veil, and people seek refuge in pitch darkness. Many rush to the harbor of Pompeii. In the evening comes the turn of gray pumice.
23:15 The "Peleian eruption" begins, the first wave of which hit Herculaneum, Boscoreale and Oplontis.
00:00 The 14-kilometer column of ash grew to 33 km. Pumice and ash enter the stratosphere. Over the next seven hours, six pyroclastic surges (a gas-laden flow of ash, pumice and lava) will hit the area. People everywhere are overtaken by death. This is how the volcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo describes this night for National Geographic:
“The temperature outside and inside has risen to 300 °C. This is more than enough to kill hundreds of people in a split second. When the pyroclastic wave swept over Pompeii, people did not have time to suffocate. The distorted postures of the bodies of the victims are not the result of prolonged agony, this is a spasm from heat shock already dead limbs"
It is possible for contemporaries to see through the eyes of a painter last moments life of the inhabitants of the city of Pompeii. It must be admitted that the manner of Raphael and Velasquez is guessed in the artist's hand. The display and detail, so sharply grasped, the saturation of crimson and reddish hues, the technique of chiaroscuro - the master absorbed all the best from the artists of that era. Bryullov himself had a very significant influence on the technique and manner of drawing, Flavitsky, Serov, Moller, and others. He was characterized by a certain academicism and majesty, which he violently displayed in the painting “The Horsewoman” and “The Siege of Pskov”.
In order to implement his idea (and the idea, it must be admitted, was embodied in a very grandiose way - on a canvas measuring 465 × 561 centimeters), Bryullov had to go to the foot of Mount Vesuvius, to see the city ruins of Pompeii. In the same place, on the spot, he made sketches for the future canvas, imagining how the revived Vesuvius spews hundreds of thousands of tons of ash and lava on the confused inhabitants of Pompeii. It took Bryullov 3 years to write the work, and in 1833 he finished writing it.
Immediately after the completion of the painting, it was brought to Rome for viewing - critics and viewers were unanimous in flattering reviews. Then the painting was taken to an exhibition in Paris and placed in the Louvre. There she was seen by a world-famous writer - Walter Scott. He said that the painting is "unusual, epic." A year later, after the completion of the Paris exhibition, the canvas finally arrives in Russia, in St. Petersburg. And here, at home, great figures and writers do not get tired of talking about it. A flattering review was left by Turgenev, and Baratynsky and Pushkin immediately sprinkled aphorisms, immediately banned by the censors.
The style of the work at that time was considered something extraordinary, innovative, because it was ahead of its time. Now this technique is recognized as neoclassicism.
So popular then stories on historical themes, Bryullov turned into a kind of reality - the characters depicted are not static, he is all in motion. Their faces are filled with horror and fear. It seems that the artist himself caught the crowd at this very moment - the reality of the painted figures is so great. Not indifferent to Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova, the royal maid of honor, Bryullov could not deny himself the pleasure of capturing her several times in the picture.
Here she appears on the left side of the canvas on a hill, in the form of a woman with a jug on her head, then the image of a woman who has crashed to death - she and her child (he is alive) were thrown off the broken stairs, and finally, she is a mother hugging her daughter. The artist depicted himself as the same painter on the left in the corner of the picture. The artist depicted in great detail and exaltation a blazing glow and falling marble statues of the gods, over which lightning is scattered.
People, maddened by fear, run away from the destruction, but fail to escape. "The Last Day of Pompeii" presents us with an image of eternal life imprinted.
Currently, the painting belongs to the Russian Museum, where in 1895 it was transferred by Nicholas I.
The famous painting by Karl Bryullov "The Last Day of Pompeii" was painted in 1830-1833. On this epic canvas, the painter captured the death of the city of Pompeii due to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
In search of authenticity, Bryullov visited the excavations of the deceased city. The figures and faces of people were created by the painter from nature, from the inhabitants of Rome. Almost all the items depicted in the picture, the artist wrote from genuine things stored in the Neapolitan Museum.
Bryullov depicts a truly infernal picture. In the distance, a volcano is burning, from the depths of which streams of fiery lava are spreading in all directions. The reflections of the flame from the burning lava illuminate the back of the canvas with a reddish glow. A flash of lightning, cutting through a cloud of ash and burning, illuminates the front of the picture.
In his painting, Bryullov uses a bold for his time color scheme. The painter pays close attention to aerial perspective– he manages to create a feeling of deep space.
Before us is a whole sea of human suffering. In the hour of real tragedy, they are exposed human souls. Here is a man protecting his loved ones, desperately raising his hand, as if trying to stop the elements. The mother, passionately embracing her children, looks at the sky with a plea for mercy. Here are the sons on their shoulders trying to carry the weak old father away from danger. A young boy persuades his fallen mother to gather strength and run away. In the center of the picture is a dead woman and a baby reaching for the lifeless body of her mother.
The painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” reminds the viewer that the main value of the world is a person. The artist contrasts his physical beauty and spiritual greatness with the destructive forces of nature. The picture caused an explosion of admiration and admiration, both in Italy and in Russia. The work was enthusiastically welcomed by A.S. Pushkin and N.V. Gogol.
In addition to the description of the painting by K. P. Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii”, our website has collected many other descriptions of paintings by various artists, which can be used both in preparation for writing an essay on a painting, and simply for a more complete acquaintance with the work of famous masters of the past .
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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 upsurge 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 dedicated " last day Pompeii" remarkably profound article, and the poet Yevgeny Baratynsky expressed the general jubilation in a well-known impromptu:
«
You brought peaceful trophies
With you in the paternal shadow,
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.
Express this "new feeling", create new look antiquity - not an abstract museum, but a holistic and full-blooded, the artist strove in his picture. He got used to the era with the meticulousness and care of an archaeologist: from more than five years to create the canvas itself with an area of 30 square meters it took only 11 months, the rest of the time was taken up by the 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 main reason”, - Bryullov shared in one of the 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 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 the seaport of 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 falling from the sky, heavy rain of ash, black impenetrable darkness , fiery zigzags, similar to 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, "a bright resurrection of 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 a 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 a lot of 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 argument 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; the baby, miraculously surviving a fall from the chariot, embraces 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 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 picture had real prototype- Opera by Giovanni Paccini "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 the monumental opera performance: the most expressive scenery is reserved for the finale, all storylines connect, 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
