The Last Day of Pompeii

What you are looking at

A street in Pompeii at the moment of catastrophe. Behind, Vesuvius erupts in a wall of red fire under a black sky, and a flash of lightning picks out statues toppling from the rooftops. In the foreground, the people of the city flee in groups, each a separate drama. Two sons carry their old father; a young man begs his mother to rise; a family shelters under a cloak; a mother clutches her daughters; a priest runs with the temple treasures; and at the center, a young woman lies dead on the paving stones, fallen from a chariot, her baby crawling beside her. Near the left, a painter carries a box of brushes and colors on his head and looks up at the sky.

The painting is by Karl Bryullov (1799–1852), made in Rome between 1830 and 1833. It is enormous, about 4.6 by 6.5 meters, and is in the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.

How it was made

Bryullov visited the excavations at Pompeii in 1827 with his brother, the architect Alexander Bryullov, and drew the Street of the Tombs, the setting of the picture. The archaeology is careful: the buildings, the paving and many objects are based on finds. Pliny the Younger's letters describing the eruption, in which his uncle Pliny the Elder died, gave the literary source; some of the groups echo his account.

The painter carrying his box is a self-portrait. Several of the women share the features of Countess Yulia Samoylova, Bryullov's friend and patron.

Looking closely

The composition is theatrical, arranged like a stage with a frieze of figures across the front. Notice the two kinds of light: the red glow of the volcano from behind, and the cold, bluish flash of lightning from the front, which lights the bodies like marble. The figures have the idealized beauty of Neoclassical sculpture, but the subject, the drama and the color are Romantic. That blend is what made the picture so powerful in its day.

Reception

Shown in Rome and Milan in 1833, the painting caused a sensation. At the Paris Salon of 1834 it won a gold medal, and it was then sent to Saint Petersburg, where it was celebrated as proof that a Russian painter could match the best in Europe. The English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton saw it in Milan, and it is often said to have inspired his novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834).

Where to see it

The painting is in the State Russian Museum. See also Ilya Repin's Ivan the Terrible and our Romanticism guide.