Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars by Volkov Solomon

Author:Volkov, Solomon [Volkov, Solomon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2011-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

Gogol always felt what he called “a passion for painting.” He took drawing classes at the Academy of Arts and loved making “architectural landscapes”: churches, temples, ruins. He wrote two important pieces about contemporary Russian artists: the essay “The Last Day of Pompeii,” written in 1834 in response to the notorious painting by Briullov on exhibition in St. Petersburg, and “Historical Painter Ivanov,” written in 1846 about Gogol’s friend Alexander Ivanov and his enormous canvas Christ Appearing to the People, created in 1837–1858 and now regarded as one of the greatest nineteenth-century Russian paintings.

The Romantic Briullov attracted the twenty-five-year-old art lover Gogol as an exotic figure and as a master celebrated in Europe, whose style—striking composition, vivid contrasts, bold chiaroscuro, and hot colors—were close to Gogol’s early writings.

In his essay, Gogol compared The Last Day of Pompeii to opera. But even then Gogol was expressing some doubts on the value of “operatic effects” in art: “In the hands of a real talent they are true and can turn man into a giant; but used by a pretender, they are disgusting to connoisseurs.”

Reaching for a higher spiritual plane, while rejecting everything “false,” brought Gogol to a friendship in 1838 with Ivanov, thirty-two and living, like Gogol, in Rome.

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