Focus on this artwork and explain the Reception.
The painting took so long to finish that Demidov threatened to cancel its commission, but when it was first shown at Bryullov's studio in Italy on Via San Claudio in Rome, it received a rapturous response. Sir Walter Scott is said to have studied the painting for an hour before declaring that it was not an ordinary painting, but an epic and Vincenzo Camuccini described it as a "flaming colossus". The Italian archaeologist Pietro Ercole Visconti wrote an article praising the painter and the painting. The Uffizi requested a self-portrait of the artist. In Milan, Bryullov was given a standing ovation in a theatre and carried through the city's streets wearing a garland of flowers. It was seen there by Edward Bulwer-Lytton whose novel The Last Days of Pompeii was published in 1834. In Bologna, gallery officials removed Raphael's St Cecilia from the walls and placed it in a private room when Bryullov asked to copy it.The reception was slightly cooler when it was displayed at the Paris Salon of 1834. It still won a gold medal, but some critics saw it as slightly outdated compared to Eugène Delacroix's Femmes d'Alger dans leur Appartement (1834), which was exhibited alongside it, the high emotional content leading one critic to comment in L'Artiste, "l'impression est moins voisine de la terreur que du ridicule" (the impression is less akin to terror than ridicule). Rosalind Blakesley attributes this slightly behind-the-times feel to the isolation of contemporary Russian art teaching from the latest French developments since the start of the nineteenth century and the tensions inherent in the work between neo-classicism and romanticism.It was the first Russian artwork to cause such an interest abroad, making Bryullov the first Russian painter to gain an international reputation. Five foreign academies made him an honorary member and the quantity of positive reviews and critical comment was such that the Society for the Encouragement of Artists published a volume of them in Russian translation.When the painting arrived in Russia in August 1834, it was received with as much enthusiasm as it had been in Italy, according to Gogol as much by those with a refined taste as those who were ignorant of art. Bryullov was made an honorary free associate of the academy and awarded the Order of St Anne, third class. He was made a professor at the academy in Saint Petersburg and placed in charge of history painting. He met the Tsar. Ivan Turgenev described the painting as "the glory of Russia and Italy" and it inspired Alexander Pushkin to write a poem about the destruction of Pompeii. Russians saw the painting as elevating the status of Russian art in Europe generally and in turn it elevated the status of painters in Russia. Gogol opined that it was a "bright resurrection of painting, which has been for too long in some sort of semi-lethargic state", but was not alone in seeing a parallel between Pompeii and contemporary Saint Petersburg and the painting as a forecast of divine retribution for the modern city's decadent Western ways. The dissident Alexander Herzen, meanwhile, saw it as an allegory about the collapse of European monarchies or the tyrannical power of the Russian state over the individual.After his great success with The Last Day of Pompeii, Bryullov was expected to produce similar large works of history, but most of his attempts remained unfinished and he was criticised for his Death of Ines de Castro, which was completed in only 17 days in 1834. Instead he found success in portraits of the Russian elite including the royal family.
Death of Ines de Castro Raphael epic Paris Salon Uffizi Alexander Pushkin Walter Scott St Cecilia Ivan Turgenev classicism Pietro Ercole Visconti Pompeii Order of St Anne Alexander Herzen Saint Petersburg Vincenzo Camuccini history painting ru Edward Bulwer-Lytton L'Artiste Femmes d'Alger dans leur Appartement The Last Days of Pompeii Rosalind Blakesley Eugène Delacroix Sir Walter Scott