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Yesterday marked the 208th birthday of Karl Briullov, a great Russian painter. To celebrate, let’s take a look at his massive masterpiece, “The Last Day of Pompeii.”
1. Karl Briullov was born in St. Petersburg in 1799 to Italian parents. He attended the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts but never fully embraced the style taught there. After completing his education in 1821, he left for Rome, where the popular artistic styles were more similar to his own.
2. Briullov traveled throughout Italy, including a visit to Pompeii after the Vesuvius eruption of 1828. With extensive research, Briullov began “The Last Day of Pompeii,” which took him three years to complete. Some of the sources Briullov referenced included Giovanni Pacini’s opera “L’Ultimo Giorno di Pompeii” and Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness description of the eruption.
3. The final painting, measuring 456.5 cm by 651 cm (or about 15 ft. by 21 ft.), was a huge hit in Italy. It inspired a poem by Alexander Pushkin and a novel, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
4. Sir Walter Scott, who supposedly knelt in front of the large canvas and stared at it for an hour, declared that “The Last Day of Pompeii” was not an ordinary painting, but instead an epic in colors.
5. For “The Last Day of Pompeii,” Briullov won awards at the Paris Salon of 1834, in addition to honorary memberships in the Academies of Bologna, Florence, Milan, and Parma.
6. Known as “the Great Karl” by his friends, Briullov is generally regarded as the first Russian artist to gain international fame.
‘Feel Art Again’ appears every Tuesday and Thursday.
Comments (6)
Comment
3. Was that the novel that began “It was a dark and stormy night”?
posted by KJ on 12-13-2007 at 11:44 am
I’ve always loved this painting. It’s like a Bruckheimer film meets sfumato.
posted by Johnny Cat on 12-14-2007 at 1:36 am
I love it when the art info overlaps with other other stuff in which I’m interested… Bulwer-Lytton and Sir Walter Scott, for example. As for the painting, the history behind it is fascinating, but I’d never want it hanging on my living room wall!
posted by Therese on 12-14-2007 at 9:43 am
I am pretty sure Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, not 1828.
posted by Katie on 12-14-2007 at 10:34 am
I really love this series and is one of the main reasons I come back to MF.
One question though, is it possible to see a greater resolution of the art works that are described? It was nice to see the greater detail in the SinterKlaas painting the other day.
posted by FigN on 12-14-2007 at 10:44 am
FigN: We post links to larger versions of the artwork when possible. Sometimes, though, I can’t obtain a copy larger than the one we post. I’ll do my best, though!
Katie: The eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum occurred in 79AD; however, that is not the only time the volcano has erupted. Vesuvius has had at least 29 major eruptions between 79AD and 1944. While the 1828 eruption isn’t considered a major one by most sources, it did occur. Alexander von Humboldt, in his 1858 book “Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe,” mentions the “recent” 1822, 1828, 1832, 1845, and 1847 eruptions.
posted by Andréa on 12-16-2007 at 12:24 pm