Picture of the day

Portrait of the Actress Juditta Pasta as Anne Boleyn. 1834. Oil on canvas. The Theater Museum "La Scala", Milano, Italy.

Karl Pavlovich Brulloff (also rendered Briullov, although he himself used the "Bruloff" spelling) was a Russian painter of the first half of the 19th Century, one of the transitional artists between the schools of neoclassicism and romanticism and the first Russian painter to gain widespread recognition in the West. His contemporaries called him The Great Karl. His masterpiece The Last Day of Pompeii (1830-1833), an enormous composition painted in Italy in 1830-1833, was a great success both with the public and the critics and the painter was hailed as one of the best contemporary European painters.

In total, Brulloff spent a total of 13 years in Italy, studying the art of antiquity, copying the works of old masters in the museums and making a lot of drawings in the streets of Rome. He painted portraits, both ceremonial and intimate ones, and created a series of genre scenes of everyday Roman life. The most important of his genre works was Italian Midday (1827). In Italy Brulloff created over 120 portraits in various techniques. Among them are portraits of the Russian aristocracy residing in Italy, as well as painters, sculptors, writers, etc., and also Italian statesmen and artists. Among the most notable are portraits of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, Prince G. Gagarin, Countess Yu. Samoilova and her foster children, Princess Z. Volkonskaya, Bruloff's brother Alexander, A. Lvov, Architect K. A. Ton, Italian singers Juditta Pasta and Fanny Persiani-Tacinardi and many others. He also painted several self-portraits, some of them were commissioned by the Uffizi Gallery. It was here that Brulloff met the countess Yulia Samoilova, who became his life-long mistress. The two were unable to make their relationship official, as Samoilova was already married, though she and her husband had separated, and divorce was not allowed under the laws of the Orthodox Church.