Karl Pavlovich Bryullov

Karl Pavlovich Bryullov(a) (1799-1852) was a Russian painter and draughtsman during the Romantic period, remembered among the greatest visual artists in the history of Russian art.

Bryullov was born in December 1799 in St. Petersburg, in the family of the academician, woodcarver, and engraver Pavel Ivanovich Briullo (1760-1833), who was of Huguenot descent. He felt drawn to Italy from his early years. Despite his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1809-1821), Bryullov never fully embraced the classical style taught by his mentors and promoted by his brother, Alexander Bryullov. After distinguishing himself as a promising and imaginative student and completing his education, he left Russia for Rome, where he worked as a portraitist and genre painter until 1835. However, it was not until he began creating historical paintings that his fame as an artist truly took hold.

His best-known work, The Last Day of Pompeii (1830-1833), is a vast composition compared by Pushkin and Gogol to the best works of Rubens and Van Dyck. It created a sensation in Italy and established Bryullov as one of the finest European painters of his day. After completing this work, he triumphantly returned to the Russian capital, where he made many friends among the aristocracy and intellectual elite and obtained a high post in the Imperial Academy of Arts.

While teaching at the academy (1836-1848), he developed a portrait style that combined neoclassical simplicity with a romantic tendency, which fused well, and his penchant for realism was satisfied with an intriguing level of psychological penetration. While he was working on the plafond of St Isaac's Cathedral, his health suddenly deteriorated. Following the advice of his doctors, Bryullov left Russia for Madeira in 1849 and spent the last three years of his life in Italy. He died in the village of Manziana near Rome and is buried at the Cimitero Acattolico there.