Painted a grandiose canvas in Italy great painter Bryullov - “The Last Day of Pompeii”. A description of the painting will be presented in our article. Contemporaries gave the work the most enthusiastic reviews, and the artist himself began to be called the Great Charles.
A little about K. I. Bryullov
The painter was born in 1799 into a family that, starting with his great-grandfather, was associated with art. Having graduated from the Academy of Arts with a gold medal, he and his brother Alexander, a gifted architect, went to Rome. He works fruitfully in the Eternal City, painting portraits and paintings that delight the public, critics and royalty. Karl Bryullov worked on the monumental dense structure for six years. “The Last Day of Pompeii” (the description of the painting and its perception by Italians can be expressed in one word - triumph) became a masterpiece for the residents of the country. They believed that the artist’s canvas evoked thoughts about the heroic past of their homeland at a time when the entire country was engulfed in the struggle for freedom.
Historical facts
The description of Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” must begin with interesting fact: the master visited excavations near Vesuvius in 1827. This sight simply stunned him. It was clear that life in the city had suddenly ended.
There were fresh ruts on the pavement, bright colors of the inscriptions that announced the rental of premises and upcoming entertainment. In taverns where only sellers were missing, traces of cups and bowls remained on the tables.
Beginning of work
We begin the description of Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” with a story about many years preparatory work artist, which took three years. First, a compositional sketch was made based on fresh impressions.
After this, the artist began to study historical documents. The artist found the information he needed in letters from a witness to this natural disaster and the famous Roman historian Tacitus. They describe a day covered in darkness, crowds of people rushing about, not knowing where to run, screams, moans... Some mourned their inevitable death, others mourned the death of loved ones. Above the rushing figures is a dark sky with zigzags of lightning. In addition, the artist created more and more new sketches, wrote various groups people, changed the composition. This constitutes a preliminary description of Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii.” The place where the action takes place was immediately clear to him - the intersection of the Street of Tombs. As soon as Bryullov imagined a rolling, heartbreaking thunderclap, he vividly imagined how all the people froze... A new feeling was added to their fear - the inevitability of tragedy. This was reflected in last composition artist and composes a description of Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii”. Materials archaeological excavations gave the artist household items for his canvas. The voids that formed in the lava preserved the contours of some bodies: a woman fell from a chariot, here are daughters and a mother, here are young spouses. The artist borrowed the image of a mother and a young man from Pliny.
Selfless work
Work on the huge canvas took three years. Raphael had a huge influence on the compositional and plastic design, on the characteristics and description of Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii”. The artist previously studied with him, copying the frescoes “Fire in Borgo” and “The School of Athens”, where there are about forty characters. How many heroes are depicted on Bryullov’s multi-figure canvas? It was very important when working on the painting to introduce his contemporaries into it, bringing distant eras closer together. This is how the portrait of the track and field athlete Marini appeared on the canvas - the father figure in the family group.
Under the artist’s brush, the image of his favorite model appears, either in the form of a girl or in the form of a mother. Y. Samoilova was the embodiment of his ideal, which glowed with the power and passion of beauty. Her image filled the artist’s imagination, and all the women on his canvas acquired the features the master loved.
Composition of the painting: a combination of romanticism and classicism
Bryullov boldly combines romanticism and classics in his canvas (“The Last Day of Pompeii”). The description of the painting can be briefly described in such a way that in the composition the master did not try to enclose everything in classical triangles. In addition, listening to the voice of romanticism, he depicted a mass folk scene, violating the classical principle of bas-relief. The action develops, going deeper into the canvas: a man has fallen from his chariot and is carried away by frightened horses. The viewer's gaze involuntarily follows him into the abyss, into the cycle of events.
But the painter did not abandon all the dispassionate ideas of classicism. His characters are beautiful externally and internally. The horror of their situation is drowned out by the ideal beauty of the characters. This softens the tragedy of their condition for the viewer. In addition, the composition uses the technique of contrast between panic and calm.
Action composition
In a canvas filled with movement, the rhythm of hand gestures and body movements is very important. Hands protect, protect, hug, extend to the sky with anger and fall powerlessly. Like sculptures, their forms are three-dimensional. I want to walk around them to take a closer look. The outline clearly envelops each figure. This classic technique was not rejected by the romantics.
Color of the canvas
The day of the disaster is tragically gloomy. Darkness, completely impenetrable, hung over the people in distress. These black clouds of smoke and ash are torn apart by sharp, bright lightning. The horizon is filled with the blood-red light of a fire. Its reflections fall on falling buildings and columns, on people - men, women, children - adding even more tragedy to the situation and showing the inevitable threat of death. Bryullov strives for natural lighting, violating the requirements of classicism. He subtly captures the reflexes of light and combines them with distinct chiaroscuro.
Canvas characters characters
The description and analysis of Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” will be incomplete without considering all the people acting in the picture. The day has come for them Last Judgment: stone monumental buildings collapse like paper from earthquakes. There is roar all around, cries for help, prayers to the gods who abandoned the unfortunate ones. Essence human soul completely naked in the face of death. All groups, which are essentially portraits, face the viewer.
Right side
Among the nobility there are base faces: a selfish thief who carries jewelry in the hope that he will survive. A pagan priest who runs away and tries to save himself, forgetting that he must pray to the gods for mercy. Fear and confusion in the composition of a family covered with a blanket... This is the description of Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii.” The photo of the masterpiece in the article shows in detail how the young father raises his hand to the sky in prayer.
The children, hugging their mother, knelt. They are motionless and simply await a terrible inevitable fate. There is no one to help them. A Christian with a bare chest and a cross on it believes in a future resurrection.
Only one figure is calm - the artist.
His task is to rise above the fear of death and forever capture the tragedy. Bryullov, introducing his portrait into the picture, shows the master as a witness to the unfolding drama.
Center and left side of the canvas
In the center is a young mother who has fallen to her death and is hugged by an uncomprehending baby. This is a very tragic episode. The deceased symbolizes the death of the ancient world.
Selfless sons carry a powerless old father. They are filled with love for him and do not think at all about their own salvation.
The young man persuades his mother, who is sitting exhausted, to get up and go to save herself. It’s difficult for two people, but nobility does not allow the young man young man leave the old lady.
The young guy peers into the face of the tender bride, who has completely lost her fortitude from the roar all around, the sight of death, the fiery glow that promise them death.
He does not leave his beloved, although death can overtake them at any moment.
The masterpiece “The Last Day of Pompeii” by K. Bryullov was destined to become a key painting in the history of art. He caught the spirit of the times and created a canvas about those who know how to sacrifice everything for the sake of their loved ones. About ordinary people whose moral concepts stand immeasurably high during severe trials. The spectacle of how courageously they bear the heavy burden that has befallen them should serve as an example of how to act in any era and in any place. true love to a person.
Medieval Christians considered Vesuvius the shortest road to hell. And not without reason: people and cities have died more than once from its eruptions. But the most famous eruption Vesuvius happened on August 24, 79 AD. And it became the last day of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.
We know about him from the words of the Roman politician and writer Gaius Pliny Caecilius Secundus, better known in history as Pliny the Younger. In letters to the historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus, he described the eruption:
The shape of the cloud was similar to a pine tree: it was like a trunk rising upward, and branches seemed to diverge from it in all directions. It was bright in places white, in places with dirty spots, as if from earth and ash raised upward.
But few people in the world read the Letters to Tacitus. And yet, anyone who went to school knows about the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. Helped... art.
Vesuvius opened its mouth - smoke poured out in a cloud - flames
Widely developed as a battle flag.
The earth is agitated - from the shaky columns
Idols fall! A people driven by fear
Under the stone rain, under the inflamed ashes,
In crowds, old and young, fleeing from the city...
Everyone has seen the picture described by Pushkin more than once - in the State Russian Museum or in reproductions. This, according to Gogol, " bright resurrection painting" - "The Last Day of Pompeii." Alexander Bryullov visited the excavations of the city covered with ashes and, with the permission of the Neapolitan king, made sketches and measurements. And suggested the plot to his brother Charles.
And others say that Karl Pavlovich Bryullov saw the majestic panorama of Vesuvius from the Sorrento Peninsula. And I got the idea to write his eruption. Russian artist and art historian Alexander Benois thought differently: the idea for the painting was born from Bryullov under the influence of the opera of the same name Italian composer Giovanni Pacini. Let's not forget about the customer, especially since he is the famous Prince San Donato from the Russian Demidov family - a philanthropist, researcher and benefactor.
But be that as it may, thanks to Karl Bryullov with the support of Anatoly Demidov, we see with our own eyes the tragedy of Pompeii - a small but wealthy southern resort with two theaters and thirty-five brothels. The tragedy of the carelessness of those dancing on the volcano: in 62, strong tremors warned Pompeii of an imminent disaster. But the townspeople remained deaf and rebuilt the destroyed city.
Nature has not forgiven thoughtlessness. On August 24, 79, on an ordinary sunny summer day, Vesuvius spoke. And he spoke for almost a day, covering the streets, houses with all their furnishings, and two thousand people out of the twenty thousand population of the city with a multimeter thick layer of ash. The rest escaped: this flight from death was depicted by Bryullov.
The breakdown of destinies reveals characters. Caring sons carry a weak father out of hell. The mother covers her children. Desperate young man, gathered with with the last of my strength, does not let go of the precious cargo - the bride. And the handsome man on a white horse hurries away alone: quickly, quickly, save himself, his beloved. Vesuvius mercilessly shows people not only his insides, but also theirs. Thirty-year-old Karl Bryullov understood this perfectly. And he showed it to us.
"And there was the "Last Day of Pompeii" for the Russian brush the first day" , - poet Evgeny Baratynsky rejoiced. Truly so: the painting was greeted triumphantly in Rome, where he painted it, and then in Russia, and Sir Walter Scott somewhat pompously called the painting “unusual, epic.”
And it was a success. Both paintings and masters. And in the fall of 1833, the painting appeared at an exhibition in Milan and Karl Bryullov’s triumph reached its highest point. The name of the Russian master immediately became famous throughout the Italian peninsula - from one end to the other. Italian newspapers and magazines published rave reviews about " Last day Pompeii" and its author. Bryullov was greeted with applause on the street, there was a standing ovation in the theater. Poets dedicated poems to him. When moving on the borders of the Italian principalities, he was not required to present a passport - it was believed that every Italian was obliged to know him by sight.
 |
The original work of Karl Pavlovich Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii” is one of the most famous paintings Russian history paintings of the 19th century century. The picture is based on a scene that demonstrates the sad fate of the inhabitants of the majestic city of Pompeii in 79 BC, when the dormant volcano Vesuvius woke up and, with its eruption, destroyed the city from the face of the Earth.
Bryullov, in order to convey all the nuances of this historical event, went on an excavation of the destroyed Pompeii, and all the details and objects that are depicted on the canvas have their true essence, since they were completely transferred from the originals located in the Naples Museum.
When creating the canvas, the author chose the main bright red and black colors of paint, which give the picture all the horror of the real events taking place. A bright flash of lightning illuminates the city and its inhabitants, who are stuck in the shadow of ash and lava spewing from the mouth of Vesuvius. People who are amazed by the current situation do not know what to do, and their panic images convey this perfectly.
Bryullov managed to convey the tragic fate of the residents and their inevitable death. In every glance of the images of people one can see the fear of future suffering and the inevitable course of events. Some of them look to the sky, hoping that their true god can save them and beg for mercy. Each image in the picture is unique. A mother hugs her two small children, trying to protect them from lightning, young guys help an old man hide in a shelter and carry him on their shoulders, a guy tries to bring a young lady to her senses and together with her wants to find a place where he can escape.
In the center of the picture, the author painted a woman who could not escape, and her baby, screaming, is trying with all his might to reach her cold body, which has left life. With each revealed image, the hopelessness of this situation becomes more clear - no one except the people themselves can help them, and their lack of concentration and unpreparedness makes them fall into fear and run in unknown directions from the approaching fiery lava.
The author was able to convey the spiritual beauty of man, who is trying to resist the terrifying forces of nature. Even despite the current situation, some residents are trying their best to help each other, first of all, remaining human, “Human” with a capital “H”.
Description 2
It is known that Bryullov himself visited Pompeii, a city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and while he was there he made many sketches and sketches for his future painting. He was amazed by the destructive power of nature and what it was capable of. Under this influence, he was able to create a truly masterpiece of world culture and painting.
This canvas is dominated by dark gloomy colors: brown, black, dirty yellow. A blood red sky does not bode well. The volcano itself is not visible to the audience. His menacing outlines blacken in the background. When creating seething lava, Karl Petrovich Bryullov uses a bright red color so that the depicted splashes of seething liquid from the crater of the volcano stand out against the dark sky.
Buildings are collapsing all around. Once magnificent statues of girls fall on the hapless inhabitants of Pompeii. The stone blocks that made up the buildings also tend to fall to the ground. Next to the collapsing buildings on the right edge of the canvas you can see a man on a horse. The frightened animal tries to get rid of the interfering rider in order to rush away from danger. A crowd settled down next to the horse. Young people are trying to carry the old man out and protect him from the impending natural disaster. Nearby, another man is trying to help an elderly lady get up. Her face depicts humility, acceptance of inevitable death.
In the very center lies a dead beauty. Her jewelry is scattered around her lifeless body, and her luxurious robes are torn. Using this image, Bryullov once again proves the futility of material wealth. A frightened child is lying on top of the girl. He doesn’t understand why mom still doesn’t get up. The left edge of the picture shows people trying to save things. Frightened, young men and women try to shield themselves from the impending natural disaster with their hands.
Despite the gloom of the picture, the people turned out to be very alive. It seems like they are about to start fussing, running around the picture in the hope of saving their lives.
When the name of Karl Petrovich Bryullov is mentioned, many recall such masterpieces of Russian painting as “ Italian noon", "Horsewoman", portraits famous people. For subjects, the artist also turned to literary works(for example, “Fortune-telling Svetlana” based on Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana”), and to myths (“Narcissus looking into the water”) and to history (“The Death of Inessa de Castro”). TO the latest genre The painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” also applies.
Essay description of Bryullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii
The author uses rather bold colors in order to show the picture as more frightening as it probably really was. Terrible tragedy, which took away many lives, a city and an entire culture. Looking at the picture, we feel its depth and the space of what is happening, as if we were inside the picture and experiencing this story together with the inhabitants of Pompeii.
The painting depicts many people whose lives were already doomed. In the left corner we can see the face of the author himself and Bryullov’s beloved, Countess Samoilova, is depicted three times - a girl with a jug, a prostrate woman on the pavement with a child, and a woman in the left corner holding her children.
It took the author 3 years to fully think through and depict all his plans. The paintings very clearly depict the varied behavior of people in the face of impending death. Sons who carry away their father. A mother kneeling and her children nearby, looking for her help. A young man urging his mother to get up and continue running. A priest, bravely and calmly looking at the approaching horror and how the fire that came from heaven washed away his gods. A crowd of fugitives. An artist collecting his tools is Bryullov’s self-portrait. A reclining woman in the center of the painting and a baby who mourns the loss of his mother, unaware of the proximity of his inevitable death.
On background, the artist depicts the volcano itself in great detail. Fire and lava, which seem to fall on people from heaven. Lightning breaks the sky and human lives in half.
Bryullov reminds us with this picture that the most important thing in this world is man and his loved ones. Like in one moment random person can become a victim of chance and lose everything in seconds, including family, loved ones and even your own own life, while being absolutely powerless against the elements.
Description of the mood of the painting The Last Day of Pompeii
Popular topics today
- Essay based on Shishkin's painting Autumn Landscape
Almost all the paintings painted by this artist personify the uniqueness of our nature and native spaces, with a skillful hand masters, they capture a still image that is full of pouring sounds, smells and movements of nature.
- Essay on the painting Winter Sun of Yuon 4th, 6th grade
The canvas depicts a quiet winter day. The day is already coming to an end, and the sun is shining with all its might. For some reason it seems to me that this is sunset. Because it is at sunset that the sun turns purple. Sky, deep blue
It seems 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 in the artist’s hand one can discern the manner of Raphael and Velazquez. The display and detail, so sharply captured, the saturation with crimson and reddish shades, 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 grandeur, which he vigorously demonstrated in the painting “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 manner - on a canvas measuring 465x561 centimeters), Bryullov had to go to the foot of Mount Vesuvius and see the city ruins of Pompeii. There, 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 onto the confused inhabitants of Pompeii. Writing the work took Bryullov 3 years, and in 1833 he finished writing it.
Immediately after the completion of the picture, it was brought for review to Rome - critics and spectators were unanimous in their flattering reviews. The painting was then 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 was “unusual, epic.” A year after the end of the Paris exhibition, the canvas finally arrives in Russia, in St. Petersburg. And here, in their homeland, great figures and writers never tire of talking about it. Turgenev left a flattering review, and Baratynsky and Pushkin immediately scattered aphorisms, which were immediately prohibited by censorship.
The style of the work at that time was considered something extraordinary and innovative, since it was ahead of its time. Now this technique is recognized as neoclassicism.
So popular then were the stories on historical topics, Bryullov turned it into a certain 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 that very moment - the reality of the painted figures is so great. Not indifferent to Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova, the Tsar's 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 image of a woman with a jug on her head, then the image of a woman who fell to her death - she and her child (he is alive) were thrown from the broken steps of the 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 the blazing glow and falling marble statues gods, over whom lightning scatters.
People, maddened by fear, run away from the destruction, but they cannot escape. "The Last Day of Pompeii" presents us with an image of eternal life captured.
Currently, the painting belongs to the Russian Museum, where Nicholas I gave it to him in 1895.
The city was discovered quite by accident at the end of the 16th century during excavation work.
Karl Bryullov. The last day of Pompeii. 1830-1833
Archaeological excavations began here in the middle of the 18th century. They aroused special interest not only in Italy, but throughout the world. Many travelers sought to visit Pompeii, where literally at every step there was evidence of the suddenly ended life of the ancient city.
And in 1827, the young Russian artist Karl Bryullov came to Pompeii. What he saw there stunned him. And this picture is most likely the result of that trip.
Before starting to draw a picture, Bryullov begins to study historical sources. He reads letters from Pliny the Younger, a witness to the events, to the Roman historian Tacitus. In search of authenticity, the artist also turns to materials from archaeological excavations; he will depict some figures in the poses in which the skeletons of the victims of Vesuvius were found in hardened lava.
The painting is valuable because almost all the objects were painted by Bryullov from original items stored in the Neapolitan museum. The surviving drawings, studies and sketches show how persistently the artist searched for the most expressive composition. And even when the sketch of the future canvas was ready, Bryullov rearranged the scene about a dozen times, changed gestures, movements, poses...
The canvas depicts Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova three times - a woman with a jug on her head, standing on a raised platform on the left side of the canvas; a woman who fell to her death, stretched out on the pavement, and next to her a living child (both were presumably 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.
On the left in the background is a crowd of fugitives on the steps of the tomb of Scaurus. In it we notice an artist saving the most precious thing - a box of brushes and paints. This is a self-portrait of Karl Bryullov.
In the autumn of 1833, the painting appeared at an exhibition in Milan and caused an explosion of delight and admiration. An even greater triumph awaited Bryullov at home. Exhibited in the Hermitage and then at the Academy of Arts, the painting became a source of patriotic pride. She was enthusiastically greeted by A.S. Pushkin:
Vesuvius opened its mouth - smoke poured out in a cloud - flames
Widely developed as a battle flag.
The earth is agitated - from the shaky columns
Idols fall! A people driven by fear
In crowds, old and young, under the inflamed ashes,
Runs out of the city under the rain of stones.
Bryullov was compared to the greats Italian masters. Poets dedicated poems to him. He was greeted with applause on the street and in the theater. A year later, the French Academy of Arts awarded the artist for the painting gold medal after her participation in the Paris Salon.
“And it was the “Last Day of Pompeii” for the Russian brush,” wrote the poet Evgeny Baratynsky. And indeed, the painting was greeted triumphantly in Rome, where Bryullov painted it, and then in Russia, and Sir Walter Scott somewhat pompously called the painting “unusual, epic.” And Nicholas I honored the artist with a personal audience and awarded Charles a laurel wreath, after which the artist was called “Charlemagne”.
Anatoly Demidov presented the painting to Nicholas I, who exhibited it at the Academy of Arts as a guide for aspiring painters. After the opening of the Russian Museum in 1895, the painting moved there, and the general public gained access to it.