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Bryullov’s nature is a cozy niche or canopy, covering from the scorching southern sun, as in the painting “At the Oak of the Mother of God”, where the artificially braided crown of an oak tree, not without humor, is likened to the umbrella depicted here. The brightness and sonority of the coloristic timbre, the play of sparkling light immerse you in a festive and carefree atmosphere. Italian nature is benevolent to man, an alternative to this is the terrible, open, ruinous heaven of Pompeii – somewhere in the middle – the image of “indifferent nature” in purely landscape works performed by Bryullov in Greece. In these watercolors we find distant landscape panoramas: views of mountains or plains stretching to the horizon, in melting, almost ghostly contours in the distance. This is another version of the romantic style, although it remained an episode in Bryullov’s work.
The spectacle of Bryullov’s Italian genres is designed to captivate the viewer with the serene beauty of this life, as if existing according to aesthetic laws, just as the pictures themselves are designed to serve as decoration, for example, a living room or a boudoir. An adequate response to them is admiration for the beauty and grace of both the subject of the image and its artistic expression.
Year of painting: 1835.
Painting dimensions: 61 x 74 cm.
Material: canvas.
Writing technique: oil.
Genre: genre painting.
Style: romanticism.
Gallery: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
