To the Tretyakov – for a spot of Bryullov! | Nota Bene: Eugene Kaspersky’s Official Blog

Ok, no messing about: let’s get stuck straight in with Karl Bryullóv‘s most famous painting:

Yes, that’s my photo of the original masterpiece – taken at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, where I was on Monday checking out the Bryullov exhibition with some colleagues to boost our collective cultural knowledge fund )…

We got to hear all about his creative path, his artworks, subtle details in his paintings, plus all sorts of other stories and facts. At the end of our nearly two-hour tour, I realized that only half of the awesomeness of a cool exhibition is made up of the exhibits themselves; the other half comes from how it’s presented to you – and by whom; that is – how lucky you are with your guide. Well we totally lucked out on this since ours wasn’t the “standard” guide, but… [drumroll] the actual head of the 18^th to early-19^th-century painting department, Doctor of Art History, Professor, Honored Cultural Worker of Russia, Lyudmila Alekseevna Markina!

What a woman! She knows so many details and fun facts in her field that not only did we all want to listen to every single one of them, but literally all the hall attendants in the galleries did too! Oh – and it turns out she has her own YouTube channel.

So, let’s dive into the Karl Bryullov exhibition!…

The place looked empty, but that’s not because the exhibit’s unpopular – turns out the museum’s closed on Mondays :). It’s their day off. How did we get in? Just lucky, I guess :)

So, where to start? Obviously from the main masterpieces – let’s go!…

The Last Day of Pompeii – what a mega-masterpiece. They say that after Bryullov first revealed this painting, he woke up famous the very next morning!

And the details, if you look close! How the different figures, movements, and faces are all painted – it’s just a masterpiece:

Everyone’s looking off in different directions – except the one girl in the middle who’s “spotted the observer”:

And who’s that in the background carrying that box of stuff? Your guess is as good as mine!

Curiously, there’s a blooper in the painting. But you can’t really blame the artist – he was hardly a volcanologist!…

See, Pompeii was destroyed by a huge eruption of super-hot volcanic gas (aka – a pyroclastic flow), and only afterward did the city get buried under meters and meters of ash. Lava didn’t come into it at all. If there’s a pyroclastic flow, there’s ash – but no lava: you never get both (trust me on this – I’m bit of an amateur volcanologist) – at least not around the same time.

Here’s another fun fact – the painting inspired a whole wave of similar paintings on the same theme. Like this one, for example:

It’s fun to zoom in and look at these in detail. Looks like the people making these popular copies had a sense of humor: some of the characters are dressed not like Romans, but in pretty modern outfits. Some even have sideburns! ->

The Horsewoman is another well-known masterpiece by Bryullov. What I don’t get is why everyone (even the horse and dogs) looks “alive” and in motion, but the horsewoman herself feels stiff – like a marble statue. Why is that? Who can say now?…

Here’s a cool story from our “professor-guide”…

Apparently, the UK once requested a super high-quality photo of this painting – but just of the horse’s face! Turns out, this horse is a rare, very high-status breed of Arabian horse. And Bryullov painted it so precisely and true-to-life – way better than anyone else. (What they needed the photo for – not sure).

Next up: “The Siege of Pskov”:

This painting’s unfinished. Some parts are painted to perfection – others are just sketched in. It’s why Bryullov was nicknamed “the master of unfinished paintings”.