Creativity K.P.Bryullov
In Russia, the largest representatives of the academic school of painting were KP Bryullov, the famous author of The Last Day of Pompeii, and the genius artist-thinker AA Ivanov. It is they who play a large progressive role in the development of the Russian art school.
Twelve years of study at the Academy of Arts did not pass without leaving a trace for Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852). They gave him an excellent school and the opportunity to continue his education in Europe. Having visited the vicinity of Naples, where archaeological excavations of the ancient Roman cities – Pompeii and Herculaneum – were carried out, he finally determined the theme of his future painting “The Last Day of Pompeii”. Shocked by the sight of the city, buried under a layer of lava and ash during the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79, he will begin to implement his plan.
The artist strives to be absolutely authentic even in the smallest detail. He uses materials from excavations, makes many sketches and sketches from nature, carefully studies historical sources, the main of which was the eyewitness testimony of Pliny the Younger, who miraculously escaped that tragic day.
As N. V. Gogol justly remarked, everything was reflected in the large-scale and majestic picture: the change of historical epochs (the fall of the ancient pagan world and the advent of a new Christian faith), the feelings and thoughts of people in the face of a catastrophe.
The artistic language of the picture is largely traditional, classicistic, but this picture cannot be called a tribute to classicism in the full sense of the word. For example, the most traditional and most complex historical genre of academic painting was interpreted in a new way! Contrary to the canons, the basis was an event from real life (the death of the city as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius), and not a mythological or biblical story. The picture was too weak to agree with the generally accepted ideas about the heroic. The substitution of the theme of civil feat, the hero’s duty to the Fatherland by the theme of national disaster, suffering and moral beauty of a person was noticed by strict connoisseurs of classicist painting.
In the work of classicism there could be no room for the manifestation of base feelings, but they are masterfully captured here by the artist. In the depiction of the characters, everything is built on the contrasts of spiritual nobility and base greed. On the left, on the steps of the tomb, we see a bearded man, overwhelmed by the thirst for profit, pushing the crowd and hastily picking up coins dropped by someone. In the depths, almost in the very center, a fleeing pagan priest in a white robe grabs the cult altar. In the lower part of the picture, near the body of a woman stretched out on the pavement, the artist depicted a casket with scattered jewelry. But no one notices them: no one needs gold chains and precious stones anymore. How can you buy salvation with them?
In contrast to base feelings, Bryullov shows the true beauty of lofty and noble thoughts. In the face of death, people care for their neighbors, do not lose selflessness, do not betray the concepts of duty and honor. The picture is perceived as a kind of hymn to the physical beauty and moral perfection of a person. It is no coincidence that N. V. Gogol noted that “there is not a single figure that does not breathe beauty, wherever a person is beautiful.”
The artist admires loyalty, sublime love and ineradicable faith in justice. The raging elements only helped to manifest in people their extraordinary spiritual beauty. The three foreground groups on the right represent these high feelings. The sons are trying to save on the shoulders of an ailing old man-father who cannot come to terms with the death of the white marble gods, who are falling down from the roofs of palaces. Their fall is perceived as a collapse of his ideals of a reasonably arranged life. Young Pliny, carefully raising and persuading his mother to gather the rest of her strength and try to escape, cannot leave the dearest person in the world. The young groom, not noticing the lightning and not hearing the roar of falling stones, holds the dead bride in his arms. The best day in their lives was the last day of their earthly happiness.
If classicism preferred a monosyllabic and monosyllabic depiction with a small number of characters (remember David’s Oath of the Horati), then everything is different in this picture. KP Bryullov refuses the classicistic requirements for the selection of the main character. The whole mass of people becomes his hero, where everyone is an equal participant in the historical drama, everyone experiences the force of an inevitable natural element.
One of the invariable rules that governed the creation of a historical picture was the frontality of the composition, that is, the deployment of action on a narrow strip of the foreground, as, for example, in a sculptural bas-relief. Preserving the generally accepted three-plan nature of the composition, its isolation and limitedness by stone tombs, the author not only places the action across the width of the canvas, but also boldly transfers it into the depths of space.
About ten times Bryullov remakes the composition, trying to achieve its maximum saturation and expressiveness. He changes the composition and location of the groups, varies gestures and postures. Having built a work of unrelated episodes and groups inscribed in traditional academic triangles, he achieves special dynamism, fills it with a sense of anxiety and tension of feelings. In order to convey the swiftness of the movement of the heroes, the author actively uses the counter movement technique (the image of a Christian preacher and a married couple with children; people crowded on the steps, some of whom are trying to get inside the tomb, while others are screaming out of it). This increases the impression of chaos and disorderly movement of frightened people.
The movement develops left and right from the center, where a woman fell from a chariot is depicted. It is here that the highest intensity of passions is transmitted, all the threads of the composition converge here. Most likely, in this image one should look for the most accurate and vivid expression of the author’s position, the main idea of the canvas, symbolizing the collapse of the beautiful, but doomed to death, ancient world. A small child stretching out his hands to a dead mother is perceived as an allegory of the new world, which will surely arise on the ruins of the old.
In accordance with the requirements of classicism, great importance was attached to uniform and diffused illumination from a single source. But contrary to the canons, Bryullov uses the effect of double illumination (an almost unreal flash of lightning and the glow of a fire from a volcanic eruption), the play of light and shadow, creating a tense emotional mood. The most difficult task was solved surprisingly boldly, which found expression in the richness of glare, reflexes on the faces, bodies and clothes of people. The artist successfully chooses the moment when an instant, dazzling flash of lightning in the midst of pitch darkness allows to highlight the most important things in their faces. Contrary to the laws of academic art, the foreground of the picture, being in a dark frame, on the contrary, only enhances the drama of what is happening.Contrasting alternations of light and shadow formed bizarre breaks in the outlines of groups and individual figures, emphasizing their shape and plasticity.
Until the very last days of his work, Bryullov remained dissatisfied, believing that he had never managed to achieve the relief of the figures that he wanted to give them. Later he said: “I lit the stones near the feet of the warrior, and the warrior jumped out of the picture. Then I lit up the whole pavement and saw that my painting was finished. “
The drama of what was happening intensified the intense flavor. The author clearly strove for the harmony of color and for an even distribution of its intensity. Using two main opposing colors (blood red and black), he achieved the utmost expressiveness of color. Their rhythmic alternation even more clearly emphasized the tragedy of what was happening. Unusual was the extraordinary brightness, saturation of colors, conveying the natural diversity and vitality of the material world. Despite the fact that “colors burn and rush into the eyes” (N. V. Gogol), they turned out to be surprisingly harmonious and filled with “inner music”.
KP Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” was received with triumph not only at home, but also in Europe. The contemporary poet E.A. Boratynsky dedicated significant lines to her celebrated author:
You brought peace trophies
With you in the fatherly shade,
And became “The last day of Pompeii”
For the Russian brush the first day!
The painting made a revolution in Russian painting: for the first time in academic halls they not only noted a deviation from the norms of classicism and a bold spirit of innovation, but they were also forced to recognize the artist’s inalienable right to creative freedom.
KP Bryullov’s brilliant talent, of course, was not limited to this masterpiece alone. He entered the history of world painting as the author of monumental compositions on ancient and biblical themes, a talented portrait painter.
