Russian artists of the first half of the 19th century. Art of Russia of the first half of the 19th century Art of the first half of the 19th century

The main movement was in the direction of realism, but it asserted itself in the fight against the authoritative classicism represented by the Academy and therefore managed to gain ground much later than in literature. While Pushkin had already become the “Poet of Reality” by the age of 25–26, Russian painting had difficulty overcoming the inert influence of the previous era. Initially, new Russian painting associated itself with romanticism.
Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (1782 – 1836)
This artist stood at the origins of Russian painting of the 19th century. His art is distinguished by passion and impulse, the desire to convey the movement of inner life. He looked for the sublime in a person, portrayed heroes in their best moments, conveyed the ability to feel, the desire to live a spiritual life. The best part of his work is the portraits of the late 1800-1810s. Kiprensky looked for reflections of the ideal in people's faces. He is interested in a person who has nothing to do with public service, who lives in the sphere of private interests, in the world of feelings.
Portraits: portrait of Evgraf Davydov (1809), portrait of a boy Chelishchev (1808 – 1809), portrait of the poet V. A. Zhukovsky (1816). The main painting techniques are as follows:
sharp contrast of light and shadow, sometimes close gradation of neighboring colors. Predominantly red, blue and white make up the main color accord. Each face of Kiprensky is unique; about such a hero we can say that he is the only one. This is a feature of romanticism.
The most famous portrait by Kiprensky was created in 1827. This portrait of A. S. Pushkin, about which everyone close to me said that it was closer than others to the original.

Sylvester Shchedrin (1791 – 1830)
Landscape of romanticism. After a trip to Italy, Shchedrin gets rid of the academic patina and gains freedom. He spends 10 years there, experiences the flowering of his creativity and dies before he can return to his homeland. He paints Italian views. Nature on his canvases appears radiant, joyful, intoxicating. The colors sparkle. Man and nature form the basis of his worldview. Shchedrin followed the same path as Constable in England and Corot in France. The task is to open the inner life to being in harmony with nature. Shchedrin became the first Russian artist to work in the open air - plein air. “New Rome”, “Shore in Sorrento with a view of the island of Capri”.
Shchedrin searched for the truth of light and air, their interaction, and mastered the laws of the plein air. He banished the museum's "brown" tones. I loved cold silver and gray ones. At the end of his life, the artist returned to hot paints. "Terrace by the sea".

The founder of the everyday genre. Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov (1780 – 1847).
A simple employee, a land surveyor, took up painting at the beginning of the 19th century. He moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg, took lessons from Borovikovsky. Venetsianov was close to the progressive circles of society. His etching speaks about this "Nobleman". At the turn of the 10-40s. Venetsianov discovered the everyday genre, acquired a small estate in the Tver province and began depicting the peasant world.
He was faced with the task of depicting light pouring from different sources, showing peasants in different positions. He saw poetry in the most ordinary things, in the life of the village. In this he is close to Pushkin. Nothing special happens in Venetsianov’s paintings. The action is usually monosyllabic. The artist does not depict conflicts. The man in his canvases is depicted surrounded by nature. Venetsianov is the first to discover the beauty of his native nature. Venetsianov's best creations “On the arable land. Spring", "At the Harvest, Summer".

Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799 – 1852)
The same age as Pushkin, Bryullov often overlaps with the great poet in his work. But if Pushkin rapidly moved from romanticism to a realistic manner, to the “poetry of reality,” then Bryullov could only combine cold academic skill with a romantic scope, especially in his most famous painting. He was looking for the ideal, bright and joyful, but did not follow difficult paths in art. After the Bryullov Academy, as always happened with the best graduates, he ended up in Italy. In the paintings of the 20s on subjects from antiquity, from the Italian Renaissance, from the Bible, decorative elements and external shine predominate. In the 30s, a tragic perception of life appeared. At this time, Bryullov’s central plan was maturing.
“The Last Day of Pompeii” (1830 – 1833)
In the 30s Bryullov creates a number of ceremonial portraits. He became an unusually fashionable artist, inundated with orders. Bryullov strives to capture a certain sublime moment. This is "Rider"- The pupil of Countess Samoilova is Jovanina.
In the 40s the artist was looking for psychological expressiveness. Wonderful "Self-Portrait" 1848 painted by the artist after a serious illness. Before us is a tired, disappointed, world-weary man. This portrait is far from cold academicism. It is written in a free manner, the brushstroke is wide, not slick, which speaks of the future of Russian art.

Alexander Ivanov (1806 – 1858)
He was a man of exceptional strength of thought and character, a “golden soul” who knew how to take care of loved ones, and at the same time was very strict in his home life. He was a real poet and despised all external effects and benefits. He was distinguished by a huge, boundless love for his homeland, a dream of its rise. An endless thirst for self-improvement, constant self-development, dissatisfaction with himself - all this made him an exceptionally bright personality. Alexander Ivanov was appreciated by Herzen and Ogarev, Chernyshevsky, his friend was N.V. Gogol.
Ivanov was born in St. Petersburg into the family of an artist. He graduated from the Academy and in 1830 came to Italy, to Rome. He will return only a month and a half before his death and bring “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” The tasks that Ivanov set for himself became more and more complicated all the time. First he wanted to comprehend the Italian school and its spirit, then connect religion and mythology with the problems of good and evil.
"The Appearance of Christ to Magdalene"– the first approach to a new task, still largely academic.
"The Appearance of Christ to the People."
From 1836 to 1848 Ivanov wrote his second and main work. In fact, he continued to work on it until his death. This canvas is full of amazing advantages: the depiction of nature and people, characters, emotional manifestations, movements of the heart, the idea itself is brilliant - to depict the truth revealed to people and the hope for salvation. Ivanov did not introduce human figures or genre motifs into his sketches. His landscapes are philosophical and historical. On "Appian Way" the road on which there were crosses with crucified slaves after the uprising of Spartacus is presented. In one branch sparkling in the sun, Ivanov was able to sense the Universe. After 1848, after revolutions in Europe, money stopped coming from Russia. Father died. Ivanov could not now complete the picture the way he wanted. And his new plans were even grander: a cycle of biblical paintings on the wall of a special building. Sketches become freer. Freed from the remnants of academicism. But, like Michelangelo, Bazhenov, Rodin, Ivanov was unable to realize all his plans. Ivanov did not receive recognition in Russia, but his work played a huge role in the development of all Russian art of the 19th century.
Pavel Andreevich Fedotov. (1815 – 1852)
Its heyday and death occurred in the 40s. The 19th century was the time of triumph of the Nicholas reaction. Tragic is the fate of the artist, who paid a high price for being the first to boldly peer into the features of Russian life. He graduated from the Moscow Cadet Corps, ended up in the Finnish Guards Regiment in St. Petersburg, and most of his life was connected with the Russian army. If not for this knowledge of the army environment, he would not have been able to so accurately paint the image of his major in the famous picture. In the army, Fedotov became interested in drawing, caricature, sketching, and often drew his friends, everyday military scenes, trips to summer military camps, etc. He studied painting on his own and began taking lessons at the Academy. His wonderful drawings are known: “The Consequence of Fidelka’s Death”, “The Husband of a Deceived Wife”, A Girl Seduced by an Officer at the Bedside of a Sick Mother.” The very names of these works are reminiscent of the natural school in literature, the meaning of which was a direct depiction of the most typical aspects of Russian life. But Fedotov was not part of the circle of writers associated with the ideologist of the natural school, Belinsky. He walked his own path. In the 40s Fedotov begins to try his hand at oil painting. He delves into the essence of life, his works become more and more tragic.
Fedotov created his most significant paintings from 1846 to 1852. Each of his paintings was a milestone on the path to a new system of artistic understanding of reality.
"Fresh Cavalier" 1846. A revealing idea is presented.

"Major's Matchmaking" 1848
This is the pinnacle of Fedotov’s creativity. The essence of the famous painting is an image of a world of deception, lies, marriage, which, of course, appears as an ordinary transaction. The world in the artist’s canvases is becoming more and more scary. Objects are distorted and strong expression appears. Satire disappears in the picture "Widow", where Fedotov presented himself in a portrait of the woman’s deceased husband.
"Players" 1852. The scene is almost unreal, fantastic. Soon Fedotov fell ill with mental illness and ended his days in a mental hospital. He is buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg. Fedotov himself, as the critic Stasov wrote, would probably be surprised if he learned that his searches went in the same direction as the searches of the best French artists of the 19th century, who paved the way for the realistic direction. For the courage with which he peered into Nikolaev reality, he paid a high price, but his achievements, the seriousness of which academicians did not immediately understand, prepared the ground for Russian realist artists - the Wanderers.

Russian artistic culture, the origins of which began with classicism, acquired a powerful folk sound, like high classicism, which was reflected in the painting of the 19th century, gradually moved from romanticism to realism in Russian fine art. Contemporaries of that time especially appreciated the direction of Russian artists in which the historical genre with an emphasis on national themes predominated.

But at the same time, there were no significant changes in the art of the historical direction compared to the masters of the second half of the 18th century and from the very beginning of the history of Russian portraiture. Many masters often dedicated their works to the true heroes of ancient Rus', whose exploits inspired them to write historical paintings. Russian painters of that time established their own principle of describing portraits and paintings, developing their own directions in the depiction of man and nature, testifying to a completely independent figurative concept.

Russian artists in their paintings reflected various ideals of national uplift, gradually abandoning the strict principles of classicism imposed by academic foundations. The 19th century was marked by a high flowering of Russian painting, in which Russian painters left for posterity an indelible mark on the history of Russian fine art, imbued with the spirit of a comprehensive reflection of the life of the people.

The largest researchers of Russian painting of the 19th century in general note the outstanding role in the high flowering of the creativity of the great Russian masters and fine arts. Unique works created by domestic masters have forever enriched Russian culture.

Famous artists of the 19th century

Having completely surrendered to the romance of the landscape and the natural environment of perception, Shchedrin, as it were, compensates with his paintings for the fallen interest of his fellow tribesmen of that time in the landscape. Shchedrin experienced the dawn of his creativity and recognition.

(1780-1847) The founder of the peasant everyday genre, His famous portrait of the Reaper, painting > Reapers, Girl in a headscarf, Spring in the arable land, Peasant woman with cornflowers, Zakharka and others. We can especially emphasize the painting of the Threshing Floor, which attracted the attention of Emperor Alexander 1; he was touched by the vivid images of the peasants, truthfully conveyed by the author. He loved ordinary people, finding a certain lyricism in this, this was reflected in his paintings showing the difficult life of a peasant. his best works were created in the 20s. (1799-1852) Master of historical paintings, The last day of Pompeii in the turmoil, the doomed inhabitants flee from the fury of the Vesuvius volcano. The picture made a stunning impression on his contemporaries. He masterfully paints secular paintings, the Horsewoman and portraits using bright coloristic moments in the composition of the painting, Countess Yu. P. Samoilova. His paintings and portraits are composed of contrasts of light and shadow. . Influenced by traditional academic classicism, Karl Bryullov endowed his paintings with historical authenticity, romantic spirit and psychological truth. (1806-1858) An excellent master of the historical genre. For about two decades, Ivanov worked on his main painting, The Appearance of Christ to the People, emphasizing his passionate desire to depict the coming of Jesus Christ to earth. At the initial stage, these are the paintings Apollo, Hyacinth and Cypress 1831-1833, the Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection in 1835. During his short life, Ivanov created many works, for each painting he painted many sketches of landscapes and portraits. Ivanov is a man of extraordinary intelligence, always striving to show the elements of popular movements in his works. (1815-1852) Master of the satirical movement, who laid the foundation for critical realism in the everyday genre. The Fresh Cavalier 1847 and The Discriminating Bride 1847,

RUSSIAN ART OF THE 19TH CENTURY

First half of the 19th century - the heyday of Russian artistic culture, which received worldwide recognition. During this period, the greatest literature in terms of its significance was created (A.S. Pushkin, A.S. Griboyedov, I.A. Krylov, N.V. Gogol, M.Yu. Lermontov, V.A. Zhukovsky, E.A. .Baratynsky, D.V.Venevitinov), music (M.I.Glinka), architecture (A.N.Voronikhin, A.D.Zakharov, K.I.Rossi)! painting (O.A. Kiprensky, K.P. Bryullov, A.A. Ivanov, P.A. Fedotov).

This flourishing of all types of art was largely due to the rise of patriotic feelings of the Russian people in the war with Napoleon, the growth of national self-awareness, and the development of the progressive, liberation ideas of the Decembrists. The entire “golden age” of Russian culture is marked by civic passion and faith in the great destiny of man.

Architecture

It is believed that in the Alexander era, Russian architecture reached its peak. In contrast to “Catherine’s classicism,” the main thing in the style of “Alexander’s classicism” was the desire for monumentality, extreme simplicity of forms, even asceticism, consonant with the Doric order of Ancient Greece.

During the reign of Alexander I, a significant part of the outstanding architectural structures were built in St. Petersburg, which became monuments of Russian classicism architecture. At the same time, the role of Alexander in the formation of the classicist appearance of Northern Palmyra was compared with the role of Pericles in the construction of the Athenian Acropolis. Such buildings are the Kazan Cathedral and the Mining Institute, the ensemble of the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island with the Exchange building and rostral columns, as well as the Admiralty.

The Kazan Cathedral, even at the request of Paul I, was supposed to resemble the Cathedral of St. in both size and appearance. Peter's in Rome. This led to the presence of a colonnade, vaguely reminiscent of the colonnade of its Roman prototype: its two wings, curved in plan, consist of seventy-two Corinthian columns carrying an entablature with a balustrade. Andrei Nikiforovich Voronikhi" (1759-1814), the architect of the cathedral, guided by urban planning principles, placed the colonnade on the side of the northern façade, which is secondary according to the canons of the church, but facing Nevsky Prospekt, the most important thoroughfare of the city.

Voronikhin, in the composition of the Kazan Cathedral, developed those urban planning principles that had developed back in the 18th century. when placing religious buildings on Nevsky Prospekt. All of them violated the “red line” of the building, forming a gap between the houses, but at the same time they created special spatial “pauses”. This was picked up by other architects who worked after Voronikhin, and was especially effectively interpreted by Rossi in the ensembles of the Mikhailovsky Palace, built for the fourth son of Paul I, Michael, and the Alexandria Theater.

The Kazan Cathedral, which has the shape of a “Latin cross” elongated from west to east, is crowned with a dome on a slender drum in the neoclassical style. In the composition of the Kazan Cathedral, for the first time in architecture, sculpture began to play a very definite role in creating an image, in this case a military memorial. Thus, the attic of the side porticos of the cathedral colonnade is decorated with bas-reliefs of biblical scenes: the eastern one is “Moses Flowing Out of Water from the Stone” (sculptor I.P. Martos), the western one is “The Copper Serpent” (sculptor I.P. Prokofiev). Both stories highlighted the theme of a hero who comes to the aid of his people in difficult times, which is important for the aesthetics of classicism. On the sides of the entrance in niches there are bronze sculptures of princes Vladimir and Alexander Nevsky, John the Baptist and Andrew the First-Called, which also helped to strengthen the national-patriotic theme.

The importance of the cathedral as a war memorial especially increased after the Patriotic War of 1812. The solemn architecture of the building itself turned out to be consonant with the pathos of victory over the enemy. From the Kazan Cathedral, after a solemn prayer service, M.I. Kutuzov went to the active army, and was brought here in June 1813. the heart of a great commander. Captured banners and keys to cities that surrendered to the Russian armies were placed in the cathedral. A significant plastic component that completed the military memorial image of the Kazan Cathedral were the monuments to M.I. Kutuzov and M.B. Barclay de Tolly (sculptor B.I. Orlovsky), installed in front of the side porticos of the colonnade and organically integrated into the architectural and sculptural ensemble of the cathedral .

Simultaneously with the Kazan Cathedral, under the leadership of A.N. Voronikhin, the building of the Mining Institute was erected, also surrounded by a colonnade. As in the Kazan Cathedral, sculptures revealing the theme of the earth, the wealth of the earth’s subsoil, were an essential plastic component of the image of the Mining Institute and its purpose.

The stock exchange was built according to the design of Jeanne François Thomas de Thomon (1760-1813) on the Spit of Vasilievsky Island and became the most important landmark in the panorama of the city, open to the Neva. Raised on a massive granite base, the building, rectangular in plan, surrounded by a monumental Doric colonnade and covered with a gable roof, is perfectly visible from a long distance. Having made the Exchange building an “axis of balance,” Thomas de Thomon streamlined its natural environment: the bank of the Strelka was raised by adding soil and pushed forward by more than a hundred meters, the coastline was given a regular symmetrical outline, decorated with granite walls and slopes to the river. The strict symmetry of the ensemble is emphasized by two verticals - rostral columns that served as beacons. At the foot of the columns, decorated with metal images of rostras and anchors, there are allegorical figures of the Volga, Dnieper, Volkhov and Neva, and in front of the pediments of the Exchange there are compositions “Neptune with two rivers” (in front of the eastern one) and “Navigation with Mercury and two rivers” (in front of the western one) ).

The fourth grandiose ensemble erected in the era of “Alexandrovsky classicism” was the Admiralty, which became a symbol of Russia’s naval power. The Admiralty was located near the imperial palace and played a key role in organizing the urban planning ensemble on the land side.

The reconstruction of the already existing complex was entrusted to the architect

Admiralty. Andrey Dmitrievich Zakharov (1761-1811). Having preserved the tower built by I.K. Korobov, Zakharov enclosed it in a case of new walls, creating a three-tier composition: a heavy and stable base with an arch forms the first tier, from which grows a light Ionic colonnade carrying an entablature with sculptures - the second tier. Above the colonnade rises a wall with a dome of the third tier, topped with a 72-meter gilded spire with an image of a sailing ship at the tip. The pediments of the Admiralty are filled with bas-reliefs. The building was also decorated with a round sculpture, removed at the request of the church authorities when a church was built in one of the Admiralty buildings. The main theme of the sculptural decoration (sculptor I.I. Terebenev), concentrated on the central tower, was the glorification of the maritime power of Russia: for example, one of the sculptures depicted Peter the Great receiving from Neptune a trident, a symbol of power at sea, and a woman sitting under a laurel tree with with a cornucopia and a club in her hands symbolized Russia.

With the construction of these buildings, for the first time in the architecture of St. Petersburg, an ensemble of such a wide spatial sound appeared. The gray St. Petersburg sky, the horizontals of the embankments, the white Doric colonnade of the Exchange, the verticals of carmine-red rostral columns, the gilded spiers of the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Admiralty - all this was combined into a composition of unprecedented scope, the likes of which are not found anywhere in the world.

Characteristic of “Alexandrovsky classicism” was a strong French influence, and the war with Napoleon did not change the artistic preferences of the emperor at all. Subsequently, the style of “Alexandrovsky classicism” in Russian architecture began to develop into the Empire style.

Empire (“empire style”) originated in France and was guided by the art forms of imperial Rome.

In Russia, this style was adopted after Russia’s victory in the Patriotic War of 1812. reflected the new claims of the imperial city, the “world capital”. The historical paradox was that the national pride of the victorious Russian people was embodied in the forms of the Napoleonic Empire style of defeated France. At the same time, in Russia, the regulation, symmetry, and static nature inherent in the Empire style were combined with the boldness of spatial solutions and urban planning scope.

The decorative elements of the St. Petersburg Empire style were composed mainly of elements of ancient Roman military equipment: legionary badges with eagles, bundles of spears, shields, axes, and bundles of arrows. Elements of Egyptian ornamentation and sculpture were also used, since the art forms during the times of the Egyptian pharaohs, the French dictator and the Russian emperors essentially had a common ideology and therefore interacted quite organically.

A special, “sovereign” mythology and complex imperial symbolism were, perhaps, the main thing in the fine arts of St. Petersburg. Moreover, in contrast to classical decor, the composition in the Empire style was built on the strong contrast of the clear field of the wall surface and narrow ornamental belts in strictly designated places. The effect was also emphasized by the coloring characteristic of the St. Petersburg Empire style - pale yellow for the buildings themselves and white for the pediments, columns, pilasters and other details of architectural decor (in contrast to the colors of the Napoleonic Empire style - red, blue, white and gold).

The yellow color of Empire architecture was not arbitrary. It was one of the most characteristic features of Russian military culture - part of the entire culture of imperial Russia. In St. Petersburg, military culture largely determined the planning structure of the city, its flavor, and rhythm of life. The architecture of barracks and regimental cathedrals, arenas and guard booths, military parades and regimental uniforms - all this left a characteristic imprint on the appearance of the city.

The very foundation of St. Petersburg was associated with the Northern War. The layout of the city was determined by its military-strategic significance. The first buildings were the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Admiralty - military buildings. And subsequently, the major architectural dominants of the capital were associated with its military life: the Transfiguration and Trinity Cathedrals (architect V.P. Stasov) were built as regimental cathedrals of the Preobrazhensky and Izmailovsky regiments, the Peter and Paul and Kazan Cathedrals became war memorials where captured banners were kept, the Rumyantsev Obelisk, The Alexander and Chesma columns were erected in memory of military victories.

Already the first successes in the struggle for Russia's access to the Baltic Sea were marked by a new state regalia - the royal standard, on the golden (yellow) field of which a black double-headed eagle held maps of the four seas in its beaks and paws. Gold (yellow) color was used as an imperial color in the symbolism of the Holy Roman Empire. The yellow color of the Russian imperial standard became the color of the imperial guard and switched to the color of military architectural structures, barracks, and then, as an integral part of the official Empire architectural style, it became the color of the capital in general, the “St. Petersburg color.”

The main exponent of the ideas of the Russian Empire style was the architect Karl Rossi (1775-1849), who built thirteen squares and twelve streets in the center of St. Petersburg. Next to its prospects, squares, colonnades, powerful arches, everything else looks like a timid stylization. Only the “Russian Empire” managed to do what Peter the Great intended - to create the image of an imperial city. It was the work of architects K.I. Rossi, V.P. Stasov, O. Montferrand that created the majestic ensemble of the central squares of St. Petersburg, which bears the features of the world capital. And the first such ensemble, one of the most outstanding not only in Russian but also in world art, was Palace Square, designed by K. Rossi.

The creation of the Palace Square ensemble was greatly facilitated by the transfer here of the most important government institutions - the General (or Main) Staff and two ministries (foreign affairs and finance).

Preserving the existing curvilinear shape of the southern side of the square, Rossi placed two huge buildings there, connected by an arch. Thanks to the elastic bending of the facade, the architecture of the General Staff acquired a pronounced dynamism, which was not inherent in the Empire style, but made it possible to compositionally bring the General Staff closer to the baroque Winter Palace. Other techniques also contributed to achieving the same goal: dividing the facades of the headquarters into two tiers, like the Winter one; decorativeness of the order; numerous sculptural details and an intricate frieze of the General Staff Arch.

Rossi's skill as a city planner was demonstrated with particular brilliance when designing a colossal arch, interpreted as a triumphal arch in honor of the victory in the war with France. As a matter of fact, Rossi used a system of three arches, with the help of which he effectively solved a difficult task - to architecturally design a strong bend in the street. At the same time, the heroic major theme of victory was expressed by the powerful flight of two parallel arches.

It was enhanced by the presence of monumental sculpture. At the foot of the arch, high relief compositions of military armor are installed on pedestals. On the second tier of the arch, between the columns, there are figures of warriors, personifying different generations of Russian people who participated in the Patriotic War of 1812. The building is also decorated with relief images of flying Glories with laurel wreaths in their hands. The magnificent completion of this entire triumphant composition, full of heroic pathos, is the image of the chariot of Victory, standing out against the background of the sky and seemingly hovering over the city. In its center is an allegorical statue of Victory in the image of a winged woman with the emblem of the state and a laurel wreath in her hands.

Rossi’s work reflected the most important feature of mature Russian classicism, which was that any urban planning task, no matter how insignificant it may seem, was solved not separately, but in close cooperation with others. As a result, a continuous and unsurpassed in beauty chain of ensembles was created. Built by Rossi in the Mikhailovsky Garden, on the banks of the Moika, the Pavilion serves as an excellent example of this: it is a kind of compositional bridge between the vast ensembles - the Mikhailovsky Palace and the Champs of Mars.

The Mikhailovsky Palace with an extensive park and services is a typical example of a city estate of the Classical era: the main building and service wings were surrounded on three sides by a front courtyard, separated from the street by a fence. The main facade was also a reflection of classicist traditions: the central entrance was highlighted by a Corinthian portico, symmetrical wings completed the risalits, and the surface of the wall before them was decorated with three-quarter columns, creating the illusion of an arcade extending from the portico. The garden façade was different, consisting of two six-column Corinthian porticoes topped with pediments and a Corinthian colonnade (wide loggia).

Having built the palace, Rossi began to redevelop the adjacent part of the city in order to create a unified urban planning composition associated with the Mikhailovsky Castle, Nevsky Prospect and the Champs of Mars. New streets were laid out, a square was laid out in front of the palace, having a strict rectangular shape, the continuation of which was the front courtyard with the main compositional center of the entire architectural complex - the Mikhailovsky Palace.

Similar in scale of the plan is the ensemble of the Alexandrinsky Theater, the creation of which Rossi devoted almost more effort and time than any other of his works.

The Alexandrinsky Theater is one of the most harmonious works of Russia. Due to well-chosen proportions, the building, which is quite large in size, seems light and graceful. The composition of the main facade of the theater is based on the motif of a loggia, decorated with a colonnade of the solemn, Corinthian order, which emphasizes the dominant role of the building in the entire architectural complex. The strong chiaroscuro created through the use of the order makes the plasticity of the facades very expressive and the walls of the auditorium, rising like a powerful cube above the attic, are almost inconspicuous. The façade of the building is crowned by the magnificent quadriga of Apollo.

Rossi, like other Russian architects of the early 19th century, in all his works masterfully combined architectural forms with sculptural and pictorial decoration outside and inside. He designed the location and character of reliefs, paintings, statues, drapery, and furniture. The decor in the interior followed the same principle, 396

the same as the external design: alternation of rapports (a repeating part of the ornament. - L.E.), strict symmetry in the composition, antique character of all the decorative elements - laurel wreaths, acanthus leaves, lion masks, consistency of color combination. An important element of the interior decor was wall and ceiling painting, either in the grisaille technique, imitating sculptural decorations, or in the scagliolo technique, which is inlaid with colored plaster in imitation of Pompeian wall paintings: on a white background - dancing nymphs, fluttering cupids, bright red and blue griffins , yellow and black colors.

One of the best examples of Empire interior design is the White Hall of the Mikhailovsky Palace. The calm whiteness of the walls and columns is offset by the gilding of the stucco cornices and Corinthian capitals. Above the doorways are bas-reliefs with figures of resting bacchantes, wreaths, garlands and other Empire attributes. The rich painting of the ceiling and the upper part of the walls combines multicolor painting, gold patterns and grisaille. The golden tone of the inlaid parquet flooring and doors harmonizes with the blue upholstery of the gilded furniture. The interior was complemented by tall floor lamps in the form of columns, chandeliers, candelabra, and candlesticks made of bronze, stone and crystal. The bronze details that decorated the tables emphasized the deep tone of the colored stone of the countertops. For all its extraordinary richness, the interior decoration is distinguished by a sense of proportion, generally characteristic of the Empire style.

The combination of efforts of architects, sculptors, decorative painters and masters of applied art determined the unique stylistic integrity of the Empire style as an independent period in the history of Russian art of the 19th century.

At the beginning of the century, memorial sculpture, which was completely new to Russian art, developed greatly. The creator of the Russian Empire tombstone, the “poet of enlightened sorrow,” as his contemporaries called him, was Ivan Petrovich Martos (c. 1754-1835). In his tombstones, Martos followed the traditions of ancient classics and created a mournful mood with the help of a generalized plastic form, silhouette and movement of draperies, endowing his images with ideally impassive faces. At the same time, the sculpture itself preserves a living human feeling, restrained emotionality, and lyricism. Such are the “genius of death”, “mourning genius”, “mourners” in his famous tombstones of M.P. Sobakina, E.S. Kurakina, A.P. Kozhukhova. The most typical of the Russian Empire style is the tombstone of E.I. Gagarina: a bronze female figure standing alone on a round pedestal in an antique tunic, with a Greek hairstyle. Soft

the flowing folds of clothing, the pointing gesture towards the ground and the deep shadowing of the eye sockets give the image a dramatic tone. If you look at the monument from the side, you feel the touching helplessness of the young woman in the face of death, which is conveyed exclusively by the accurately found outline of the figure. Martos' favorite image was the angel of sorrow with an inverted torch in his hands as a symbol of extinct life.

Soft lyricism was also inherent in park sculpture decorating grottoes, fountains, garden pavilions, and alleys. Perhaps the most poetic of them is the bronze fountain sculpture “Milkwoman with a Broken Jug” (sculptor P. P. Sokolov) in the park of Tsarskoe Selo. The exquisite flowing silhouette of a sadly bowed head resting on one's hand, the feeling of the softness of a girl's body, the silkiness of flowing fabric, and finally the material itself - bronze - are characteristic of the Empire style. It is also typical for this style that the genre motif is devoid of even a shadow of everydayism: the girl is perceived as an ancient nymph, and not an ordinary thrush. A.S. Pushkin dedicated the lines written in Greek hexameter to the Tsarskoye Selo statue:

The maiden dropped the urn with water and broke it on the cliff. The virgin sits sadly, idle holding a shard. Miracle! the water will not dry up, pouring out from the broken urn; The maiden sits eternally sad over the eternal stream.

The embodiment of the patriotic aspirations of the era was the famous monument to Minin and Pozharsky on Red Square in Moscow, executed by Martos. The ideal of a national hero, which was embodied in the sculptures of V.I. Demut-Malinovsky, S.S. Pimenov, I.E. Terebenev for the Kazan Cathedral and the Admiralty, received the most convincing solution in the monument to Martos: the Nizhny Novgorod merchant Minin calls the commander Prince Pozharsky for protection Fatherland. But since for Martos Greece was the ideal that he followed all his life, his Russian images seem to be made according to ancient models, although the accessories contain “Russian” details, for example, Minin’s peasant shirt and the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands on the shield of Prince Pozharsky.

By the beginning of the 30s, classicism as a movement had completely exhausted itself: the rise of national feeling, the civic pathos of serving the Fatherland within the framework of a feudal-serf state, which fed classicism of the first quarter of the century, could not take place after the defeat of the Decembrists. This was precisely the reason for the gradual degradation of architecture and monumental sculpture in the second third of the 19th century.

In the first years of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, the activities of K. Rossi continued. The architect V.P. S/pasov also worked a lot, who built his famous “military” cathedrals - Trinity, Preobrazhensky, triumphal gates - Moscow, at the Moscow outpost, and Narva, as a monument to the victory of the Russian guard in the Patriotic War of 1812, Pavlovsk barracks guards regiments.

The style, which can be called “Nicholas Empire,” became the last phase in the development of classicism in Russian architecture, and the middle of the 19th century. - this is already a time of crisis in classicist aesthetics. Externally, the crisis manifested itself in the loss of harmony of architectural forms, their excessive geometricity, and overcomplication of decorative details. A clear idea of ​​the change that occurred in the style of Russian architecture of the mid-19th century is given by the buildings included in the development of St. Isaac's Square in St. Petersburg, the main place among which was undoubtedly occupied by St. Isaac's Cathedral, built according to the design of Auguste Montferrand (1786-1858). With columns porticoes with heavy pediments decorated with high reliefs. A gilded dome rises above the cathedral to a height of 101 m, the drum is surrounded by a colonnade topped with a balustrade with statues.

For wall cladding, Montferrand used light gray Olonets marble, replacing the warm-colored plaster cladding traditional to Russian classics. The use of granite columns in the composition of the facades was also unusual. The mirror polishing of their trunks, the use of metal to make bases and capitals - all this added hard, cold features to the architectural image.

The facades of the building were decorated with round sculptures and high reliefs made of metal on a theme from Sacred History. In the decoration of interiors, excessive splendor and fragmentation of forms, a kind of “carpet-like” filling of the plane, appeared. The famous malachite columns of the cathedral, made using the “Russian mosaic” technique, in which the stones were selected according to color and natural pattern, giving the finished product the impression of a monolith, can hardly be called artistically successful, since the pattern of the stone and the play of shades disappear due to the great distance at which the columns are from the viewer. Sculpture is quite widely represented in the interior of the cathedral, although the dominant role in it is played by mosaics and paintings made by outstanding painters of academic classicism-K. P. Bryullov, F.A. Bruni, P.V. Vasin. The dome was painted according to Bryullov’s sketch, Bruni created the composition “The Flood”, “The Battle of Alexander Nevsky with the Swedes”.

At the same time, there was an increase in romantic tendencies. A characteristic feature of romanticism in art was an appeal to past historical eras, which contributed to the formation of a new artistic movement of “national romanticism” that swept across Europe after the Napoleonic wars. It was precisely these aspirations that dictated the experiments of K. Rossi in designing wooden houses “in the Russian style” for World War II veterans in the village of Glazovo, near Pavlovsk, or the “exemplary taverns” of O. Montferrand and A. I. Stackenschneider, which imitated peasant houses.

In the Nicholas era, the movement of “national romanticism” was focused on English Gothic and Prussian Hellenism. Nicholas's personal tastes and his family ties with the German imperial house were the reason for this. The most outstanding example of this trend was the Cottage in Peterhof, built by A. A. Menelas in the late 20s. All its external and internal decoration corresponded to an English “Gothic house”. The furniture, Gothic carvings on the walls, and colored glass in the windows created a special romantic atmosphere. Zhukovsky especially for the Cottage composed a coat of arms in the spirit of knightly times with a sword, a wreath of roses on a shield and the motto “For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland.”

A characteristic example of Prussian Hellenism with its rigid, geometrically regular planes and small, fractional drawing of ancient ornaments is the building of the new Hermitage, built according to the design of Leon von Klenze.

In the disputes between “Slavophiles” and “Westerners” about the ways of development of Russian national culture, the “Russian-Byzantine style” of architects K. Ton and A. Gornostaev was born, which became the main one in the subsequent period.

From the very first years of the new century, various artistic trends coexisted in the tastes and hobbies of society: on the one hand, classicism reigned, which did not recognize any deviations from its canon, on the other, romantic impulses towards something more free and independent appeared. The development of romanticism in Russian painting is associated with the fashion for ruins, Freemasonic sacraments, chivalric novels and romances.

An outstanding romantic artist of the period of Alexander's classicism was Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (1782-1836). Having graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in the class of historical painting, Kiprensky entered the history of Russian culture as a portrait painter. A feature of Russian art was a fusion of classicism, sentimentalism and romanticism. This led to a rare combination of the civic sublimity of the images created by the artist with their individual originality and human warmth. Any portrait of Kiprensky can be viewed from these positions, but perhaps the most visual is the “Portrait of Evgraf V. Davydov.” In its heroic scale and romantic inspiration, this is an image of a new era. Just as service in the army in these years turned from class traditions into a patriotic cause, so this ceremonial portrait, by design, is far from the official ceremonial appearance of the 18th century.

Evgraf Davydov is the cousin of the famous Denis Davydov, who distinguished himself in the military campaigns of 1807-1808, the future hero of the “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig, is presented as a daredevil and a knight, rebellious and dreamy. He is similar to the hero of the “hussar songs” Denis Davydov, who “feels stuffy at feasts without will, without plowing” and who, like Pushkin’s romantic hero, “hung an abusive lyre between his faithful saber and saddle.” This portrait fully expresses the nobility of the soul of a Russian man - a patriot ready to lay down his life for the Fatherland, and an inspired poet. Perhaps this is precisely why the tradition of considering this image a portrait of the “singer-hero” Denis Davydov is so strong, because it coincides with the image of the legendary partisan poet, who is a national ideal.

In a picture with amazing for the 19th century. color harmony was achieved with skill: the blue-black sky and olive foliage set off the curly head and honey-yellowish tone of the hero’s face, the scarlet mantle sparkling with gold emphasizes the shining white leggings with a hanging silver cord of the sword belt. And not only the appearance of the hero, but also the coloring creates a major mood.

In “Portrait of Evgr. Davydov” Kiprensky appeared as a romantic, but a Russian romantic, reflecting the bright originality of Russian art. It was determined by the peculiarities of the historical period of 1800-1810, by the fact that Russia was embarking on the path of liberation struggle against the enemies of the Fatherland, and faith in justice, in victory, social optimism, high citizenship and public pathos dictated the specific features of Russian romanticism.

Kiprensky created a whole gallery of portraits of heroes of the War of 1812, demonstrating an amazing ability to modify the painting style, coloristic, lighting effects and the entire emotional structure of the portrait in each case.

The artist’s undoubted masterpiece was the portrait of A.S. Pushkin, considered the best of the poet’s lifetime portraits, for among the artists of that time only Kiprensky was able to come close to Pushkin in his correct understanding of the most important historical trends of the era.

They enthusiastically wrote about the portrait that this is “a living Pushkin... having seen him alive at least once, you immediately recognize his penetrating eyes and mouth, which lacks only a constant shudder.” Pushkin wrote to Kiprensky: “I see myself as in a mirror...” And the meaning of these words, one must believe, is much deeper than an uninitiated person might imagine. Kiprensky was obsessed with the dream of creating a painting system that would give the complete illusion of life, “acting like a mirror that shimmers with as many colors as there are in things reflected on its surface.” And what the artist reflected on the surface is the imprint of difficult thoughts and bitterness on the noble brow with the outward calmness of the pose. Involvement in the poet’s spiritual world allowed Kiprensky to create an enduring image, consonant with the immortal lines of “Monument”:

I have erected a monument to myself, not made by hands; the people’s path to it will not be overgrown. He ascended higher with the head of the rebellious Alexandria pillar.

A remarkable painter, the creator of a unique national-romantic movement in Russian painting, was Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov (1780-1847), Borovikovsky’s favorite student. Venetsianov created a unique style, combining in his works the traditions of capital academicism, Russian romanticism of the early 19th century. and the idealization of peasant life. He became the founder of the Russian everyday genre. Contrary to the opposition between “simple nature” and “graceful nature” that existed in academic aesthetics, Venetsianov, turning to the depiction of peasant life, showed it as a world full of harmony, grandeur and beauty. Venetsianov's style also influenced the development of applied art. His drawings, which depicted the “characteristic types” inhabiting the Russian Empire, served as the basis for the creation of a series of porcelain figurines at the Gardner factory.

At the same time, romanticism, which at that time combined with academic classicism, was dominant in official artistic life.

In the 30-40s of the XIX century. The leading role in the fine arts belonged to painting, mainly historical painting. Its characteristic feature was the reflection of the events of ancient history at tragic climactic moments. In contrast to the historical painting of the previous era (A, P. Losenko), which gravitated towards national history with moralizing subjects, where the bright beginning triumphs over the forces of evil, the historical compositions of K. P. Bryullov, F. A. Bruni, A. A. .Ivanov are of an abstract symbolic nature. As a rule, their paintings are painted on religious subjects, the emphasis in the image is transferred from the central figure of the main character to the crowd at a critical moment. Restless crowds, pursued by blind, inevitable fate (Bryullov’s “The Last Day of Pompeii”) or divine retribution (Bruni’s “The Copper Serpent”), fall at the feet of the prophets and the footstools of idols. The dramatic nature of the plot, the dynamism of the composition, the intensity of passions, contrasting color and lighting effects - all these features inherent in the works of Bryullov, Bruni and Ivanov defined the romantic period in the development of Russian historical painting.

The leading role here belongs to Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852), who combined in his work a romantic concept with the classic canon of imagery. Bryullov’s contemporaries unanimously considered the large historical canvas “The Last Day of Pompeii” to be Bryullov’s main work. The idea of ​​the painting was based on a romantic emotional contrast between the perfection of the people depicted and the inevitability of their death: buildings collapse, marble idols fall, and no one, be they brave, beautiful or noble, can be saved during a catastrophe. Characteristic of romanticism was also the desire to “see” and truthfully convey a historical event: Bryullov even made a drawing of “The Street of Tombs” from life, which was reproduced almost unchanged in the painting. The classicist academic tradition manifested itself here in a certain artificiality of the composition, reminiscent of a pompous opera finale, in the replacement of living people with a collection of wax figures with very beautiful, but dead faces and the same gestures, in purely theatrical loudness, reminiscent, in the words of A. Benois, of “the burning of Bengal lights and flashes of lightning." At the same time, Bryullov amazes with his artistry, virtuoso technique, compositional scope and vivid picturesqueness.

Bryullov was also one of the most significant and popular Russian portrait painters of his time. He is a master primarily of ceremonial oil portraits, where a person is presented at full height in a solemn setting, as well as excellent pencil and watercolor portraits. Bryullov's portraits reflect the romantic ideal of a beautiful and proud personality, standing above his surroundings. Such is, for example, “The Horsewoman,” executed in shining golden-fawn, pink and greenish-brown tones, reminiscent of the lush valerine painting of the 18th century.

In its full splendor, Bryullov’s enormous talent, despite his academic training, manifested itself in two portraits of Countess Yu.P. Samoilova - with her pupil Jovanina and the little black arap and with her pupil Amacillia in a masquerade. In the last portrait, the simplicity of the composition and laconic coloring, built on the rich color contrast of blue and red, give the canvas a special decorativeness and at the same time monumentality. The countess’s beautiful, cold face framed by black curls against the backdrop of a bright red curtain, her attire as a masquerade queen, her young companion in oriental attire, the motley crowd of masks in the back of the hall - everything contributes to the creation of a bright romantic image.

Bryullov also created a number of portraits that reveal the real image of a person; the romantic element in them manifested itself only in the colorfulness and richness of color. This is the portrait of the publisher of the art newspaper A.N. Strugovshchikov in a black cloak against a scarlet background, where the contradictory features of his personality are correctly noted.

Bryullov's name became a symbol of a new pictorial academicism with elements of romance.

Even more academic romanticism manifested itself in the work of Fyodor Antonovich Bruni (1799-1875). His “Copper Serpent” belongs entirely to its era: faces merge into a crowd gripped by common fear and slavish obedience. The rhythm of the distribution of human figures, the distribution of light and shadow seems to repeat the rhythm in which the emotions of the crowd rise and fall. The religious and mystical orientation of the painting reflected the fashionable mood at court and in high society circles.

The most significant phenomenon in Russian painting of the 30-50s. XIX century - works by Alexander Andreevich Ivanov (1806-1858). Ivanov used traditional academic techniques of arranging a painting with the help of wax mannequins, and sought to test “classicism in kind” in everything, comparing his own sketches with ancient sculptures, borrowing poses and movements from them. “Apollo, Cypress and Hyacinth engaged in music and singing”, “The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection” absorbed all the features of academic classicism, softened by a romantic interpretation. The most typical example of historical painting of the second third of the 19th century. is his famous painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People,” in which the artist wanted to express the essence of Christianity, the moral revolution that the moral and ethical norms of this teaching produced. In the course of his titanic twenty-year work, the artist became increasingly convinced of the limitations of traditional academic techniques of composition, drawing, and painting and sought to paint real life, and not invented academic productions. The sketches of faces for the painting are a whole inspired artistic study of what a person is like in slavery, in doubt, in the blindness of fanaticism, in the insight of truth. Here we see humanity at a historical crossroads, at the turn of paganism and Christianity, at the moment of spiritual insight, before choosing its path, and all this is recreated by Ivanov with inimitable psychological skill. The depth of comprehension of the properties of the human soul places Ivanov among the greatest masters of world painting. Ivanov’s sketches are also unique in terms of color: blue shadows on the human body, gray, dull greens in the sun, orange and green reflexes on faces - all that diversity and novelty of color relationships that only the impressionists came to and which before Ivanov in the entire history of painting there was none at all. But he did not dare to completely transfer his colorful findings onto a large canvas, as well as figures and types painted from life.

It was not for nothing that contemporaries thought that the painting looked like a tapestry, and A. Benois wrote that it makes a painful impression, because it seems that there are two paintings in front of you - one painted on top of the other, the top one is perceived as a dreary and sluggish tracing paper with the one underneath it.

At first glance, the belonging to romanticism of “The Appearance of Christ to the People” does not seem as indisputable as the paintings of Bryullov and Bruni. It lacks the drama of the plot, the dynamics of the action, the raging passions, color and light and shadow effects. At the same time, the general concept of the picture, its idea, is undoubtedly romantic: the call of the prophet John the Baptist and the preaching of Christ were supposed to awaken the people of Judea from the “centuries of silence.” This also correlated with the idea of ​​the messianic purpose of the artist and art. The concept of “The Appearance of Christ to the People” reflected the romantic understanding of the historical process as a process of moral improvement of mankind. Ivanov’s talent, manifested in depicting a biblical story, became the forerunner of new painting.

A. Ivanov had no followers in Russia. He was the last historical painter, after whom the Russian school of painting began to develop along the path of “illustrating reality” and “exposing life” in the paintings of artists of the “natural school” and the Wanderers.

The natural school, which has the features of critical realism and an acute social orientation, arose in the middle of the 19th century. initially in Russian literature and appeared in the works of N.V. Gogol, N.A. Nekrasov, F.M. Dostoevsky, I.A. Goncharov, D.V. Grigorovich. Simultaneously with new literature, whose representatives strove for naturalness, naturalness, and depiction of life without embellishment,” by the mid-40s of the 19th century. A whole generation of artists appeared - adherents of the natural school. And the first among them should be considered Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (1815-1852), whose paintings represent scenes from life, where the tragic essence of the situation is hidden under the cover of the everyday. This is a kind of moral sermon, the purpose of which is the correction of others. These are “Fresh Cavalier”, “The Picky Bride”, “Breakfast of an Aristocrat”, “Major’s Matchmaking”.

In the film “Major's Matchmaking” there was a typical phenomenon of life at that time - a marriage of convenience: a rich merchant and his entire family dream of going “from rags to riches” through the marriage of his daughter to a bankrupt major. Here, the art of mise-en-scène, characteristic of Fedotov, is most palpable: in the center, the cutesy bride breaks away from the hands of her mother, who roughly grabs her by the skirt to hold her in the room, the rest of the characters are united in groups, each of which in its own way “tells” about the patriarchal merchant life. The extraordinary precision, expressiveness of the characters’ poses, gestures, and facial expressions allow us to see for a moment the true morals of this family. In a minute, the daughter will straighten her dress, the mother will smile kindly and bow, the cook and household members will disappear into the back rooms. The characters were chosen by Fedotov with an amazing knowledge of Russian life and represent a curious and precious collection of physiognomies characteristic of the 40s.

The painting is a true masterpiece in terms of painting: its color scheme is based on an expressive juxtaposition of pink, lilac, greenish-ocher and yellow. The shimmer of thick silk fabric, the shimmer of old bronze, and the shine of transparent glass are conveyed with a remarkable sense of material. In the soft lines of the bride’s thrown back head, in her gesture, in addition to affectation, there is a lot of femininity, emphasized by the airiness of the white and pink fabrics of her outfit. In all this, in addition to Fedotov the satirist, one senses Fedotov the poet.

However, Fedotov’s most poetic and perfect work is considered to be his last painting, “Anchor, More Anchor!”, where there is almost no dramatic action, and the theme is revealed in the pose, in the gesture, in the color scheme of the painting.

In a cramped hut, dimly lit by a dying cinder block, an unhappy young officer stretched out on the bunk, mortally bored from forced idleness at a winter camp in some village. His only entertainment is the poodle jumping over a stick. “Anchor,” the officer shouts to the dog, “more anchor!” - and the restless, cheerful creature tirelessly gallops for the pleasure of its owner.

The stultifying monotony and suffocating atmosphere of life in a remote corner are masterfully conveyed by color: the hot-red wavering light of a lonely candle in spots snatches out of the darkness seemingly blurry and unreal objects, contrasting with the cold gray-bluish tones of the moonlit landscape outside the window.

Fedotov was the forerunner of critical realism in Russian genre painting. It was this analytical method, revealing the contradictions of the surrounding world, that was to become dominant in Russian art of the second half of the 19th century.

Musical culture

A characteristic phenomenon of the cultural life of the beginning of the century were literary and musical gatherings, the initiators of which were outstanding Russian writers. The musical gatherings of A.A. Delvig became widely known, where, along with the poets A.S. Pushkin, I.A. Krylov, N.I. Gnedich, D.V. Venevitinov, the composer M.I. Glinka attended.

The music salon of M.Yu. Vilyegorsky, an enlightened amateur composer, had the generally recognized significance of a “privileged” concert hall in the capital. The best Russian artists and visiting celebrities shone here, and foreign guest performers could count on success with the audience in public concerts only after closed evenings with M.Yu. Vilegorsky.

In Moscow in the 1820s, the center of musical life was the house of A.S. Griboyedov on Novinsky Boulevard, where composers A.A. Alyabyev, A.N. Verstovsky, and the first Russian music critic V.F. Odoevsky met.

But the most famous was the music salon of Z.A. Volkonskaya, a famous beauty, singer, writer, who settled in Moscow in 1824 near the Tverskaya Gate in a real palazzo with Roman statues and Pompeian frescoes. During the evenings, literary readings, concerts, theatrical performances, amateur opera performances, live paintings, masquerades, and children's performances based on Racine's plays were held in her house. Members of the philosophical and literary circle “Society of Philosophy” D.V. Venevitinov, V.F. Odoevsky, I.V. Kireevsky, S.P. Shevyrev constantly gathered in Volkonskaya’s salon. Literary readings were attended by almost all famous poets: V.A. Zhukovsky, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykov, A.A. Delvig, the exiled Polish poet A. Mitskevich, I.I. Kozlov (who dedicated his famous translation to the princess Yaroslavna's lament from “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”), writers M.N. Zagoskin, I.S. Turgenev, A.S. Griboyedov. All the vocal celebrities who successfully performed in Russia in the 20s - Polina Viardot, Angelica Catalani - certainly attended the princess’s musical evenings. It was in Zinaida Alexandrovna’s salon that the famous musical evening was held in honor of M.N. Volkonskaya (née Raevskaya), who was leaving for exile with her husband, which was attended by A.S. Pushkin.

The great poet was a frequent guest in the salon of Z.A. Volkonskaya. “Come back,” she wrote after him. - It is fitting for a great Russian poet to write either among the expanse of the steppes, or under the shadow of the Kremlin; the creator of “Boris Godunov” belongs to the city of the kings.” In response, Pushkin sent her his poem “Gypsies” with the famous poetic dedication:

Among the scattered Moscow, With the buzz of whist and Boston, With the ballroom babble of rumors, You love the games of Apollo. Queen of muses and beauty, With a gentle hand you hold the Magic scepter of inspirations, And above the pensive brow,

Double crowned with a wreath, And the genius curls and burns. The singer captivated by you, Do not reject the humble tribute, Hear my voice with a smile, As the nomadic Catalani Gypsy listens to in passing.

Musical and literary circles of the 20-30s united the best representatives of the Russian intelligentsia and played an important role in the development of theatrical and musical public life.

Serf theaters played a major role in the development of Russian theater and the formation of performing schools in opera, drama, and ballet, on the stage of which the talents of P. Zhemchugova, T. Granatova and many others first appeared.

The tradition of the serf theater gradually gave way to public city state theaters, where a whole galaxy of dramatic actors emerged, such as E.S. Semenova, A.S. Yakovlev, P.S. Mochalov.

The theatrical repertoire was unusually wide: along with the plays of A.P. Sumarokov and D.I. Fonvizin, writers of the 18th century, there were the patriotic tragedies of V.A. Ozerov, the witty vaudevilles of A.A. Shakhovsky, and the “magic” operas of S.I. .Davydov and K.Kavos, authors of the new century. Delivered in 1807 V. A. Ozerov’s tragedy “Dmitry Donskoy” caused an unprecedented storm of delight. At the same time, comedy genres enjoyed success - comic opera, vaudeville, comedy.

A significant role in the development of the theater was played by vaudeville - a light comedy with singing and dancing - which became perhaps the most popular genre in the 20s. The success was associated not only with the naive “entertainment” of vaudeville, it touched on acute, topical topics of our time, and reflected familiar pictures of Russian life. For example, Kavos’s vaudeville “Peasants, or Meeting of the Uninvited,” in which the main character was the partisan elder Vasilisa, was very popular during the War of 1812. The inherent features of vaudeville's sharp satire and topicality contributed to the development of realism in the Russian theater. It is no coincidence that vaudeville is considered the soil on which A.S. Griboyedov’s brilliant play “Woe from Wit” grew.

It was at the beginning of the 19th century. The high traditions of the Russian choreographic school began to take shape, gaining world fame for Russian ballet. Its development was greatly facilitated by the famous choreographer, a major innovator in the field of magical poetic ballet, Charles Didelot (1767-1837). Didelot amazed the audience with a new, unprecedented ballet technique, especially jumps simulating flight - balloons, which he was proud of as his invention and which became possible on the Russian stage thanks to the talent of Russian dancers A. I. Istomina and A. P. Glushkovsky. The best description of Istomina’s art was given by A.S. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin”.

It has become a tradition for the Russian theater to perform nationally characteristic dances: Russian, Ukrainian, Cossack dances, mazurkas, Hungarian, Spanish dances were staged in all ballets and divertissements (insert numbers in dramatic, opera, and ballet performances of the 18th-19th centuries).

A vivid picture of theatrical life in the 1810-1820s is painted in “Eugene Onegin”:

The opera largely preserved the forms that had developed in the previous era, when spoken dialogue alternated with song numbers. It was most often a domestic opera based on a plot from folk life using folk songs.

At the beginning of the 19th century. New opera genres arose, which were further developed in the work of M.I. Glinka. These include fairy tale opera and historical-patriotic opera. Russian fairytale opera arose under the undoubted influence of romanticism of the 1800s with its keen interest in folk life and folklore. The first example of such a “magic opera” was the opera “Rusalka” by composers S.I. Davydov and K. Kavos. The basis was taken from the German opera “Virgin of the Danube”, revised in the spirit of Russian folk tales.

Not a single opera, except for “The Miller the Sorcerer,” was such a success, which was explained not so much by the entertaining stage production with many decorative effects, but by the music of S. I. Davydov: the fantastic scenes of the opera were distinguished by colorful, transparent orchestration, the dance episodes - by national flavor , vocal numbers were based on folk melodies, but in the form of large arias and ensembles.

Among the patriotic operas, the most significant is “Ivan Susanin” by K. Kavos. The librettist of the opera, the famous playwright A.A. Shakhovskoy, focused on the feat of the Russian people in their struggle against the Polish intervention in the 17th century, causing a direct association with the heroic struggle against Napoleon in the 19th century. But, based on the traditional models of the French “opera of salvation” at that time, K. Kavos deprived it of its true tragedy, since it lacked the core moment - the idea of ​​​​the heroic deed of the main character. In the finale, a Russian detachment came to the rescue, and the opera ended with moralizing couplets.

Among the greatest figures of Russian national culture is Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857), a composer whose multifaceted creativity opened a new era in the development of Russian music, determined its future path both in terms of the development of new genres and in terms of melodicism (reliance on folk songs).

The work of Russian composers, including Glinka, was greatly influenced by the realistic aesthetics of Pushkin, who, by studying oral folk art and folk speech, created a new classical literary language. Deeply folk in spirit and composition, his works “Ruslan and Lyudmila” and “Rusalka” were the basis for the libretto of the famous classical operas by Glinka and Dargomyzhsky, lyrical poems became romances.

The central place in the work of M.I. Glinka is occupied by the operas “A Life for the Tsar” and “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, which determined the future path of the Russian opera school. It was from them that two branches of opera classics subsequently developed: folk historical musical drama and fairy-tale-epic opera. “A Life for the Tsar” is a heroic opera in which the main role belongs to the people and their representative - the patriotic peasant. The people decide the fate of the fatherland at crucial moments in its history, nominating heroes capable of immortal feats. This is exactly how the Decembrist poet K.F. Ryleev portrayed the hero in one of his “Dumas”, which served as the basis for the opera.

Therefore, Susanin’s death is perceived as a victory that brings happiness to the people - a hero died, but his native land was saved. Hence the cheerful ending: the opera ends not with the scene of Susanin’s death, but with a picture of a national triumph - the grandiose chorus “Hail!” “A Life for the Tsar” is the first Russian opera of wide symphonic development, without spoken dialogue, but with two folk choirs that begin and end the opera and express the idea of ​​patriotism and heroism of the Russian people.

M.I. Glinka is the founder of Russian symphonic music, the best examples of which are still considered “Kamarinskaya”, “Aragonese Jota”, “Night in Madrid” and “Waltz Fantasy”. Almost all of them use folk, song or dance themes and recreate images of reality: a folk festival in “Kamarinskaya” and a folk festival under the sultry sun of the south in “Aragonese Jota”. “Kamarinskaya” is not only a picture of folk fun, it is a truthful recreation of the traits of the national Russian character - courage, breadth, even rollickingness, humor and sincere lyricism. The music is based on two folk songs - the wedding song “Because of the Forest, the Dark Forest” and the dance song “Kamarinskaya”, which alternate, forming the so-called form of double variations, close to folk music. The historical significance of “Kamarinskaya” for the Russian symphonic school is revealed in the famous words of P.I. Tchaikovsky: “It is all in Kamarinskaya, just as the whole oak is in the acorn.”

"Glinka's romances, which he composed throughout his life, reflected not only the evolution of his work, but also of Russian lyrics in general. The twenties of the 19th century marked the heyday of Russian sentimental-lyrical everyday romance, and were reflected in the work of M.I. Glinka elegies of contemporary poets - V.A. Zhukovsky, E.A. Baratynsky, K.N. Batyushkov.The pinnacle of this period was the famous elegy “Do not tempt” to the poems of E.A. Baratynsky.

The end of the 30s - the beginning of the 40s - the Pushkin era in the chamber vocal work of M.I. Glinka. The musical structure of M.I. Glinka’s romances to the words of A.S. Pushkin “I am here, Inesilya”, “Night Zephyr”, “The fire of desire burns in the blood” fully corresponds to the poetic images of Pushkin’s text. A beautiful romance based on the poems of A.S. Pushkin “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”, where the music completely merges with poetry:

I remember a wonderful moment: You appeared before me, Like a fleeting vision, Like a genius of pure beauty.

In the languor of hopeless sadness,

In the worries of the noisy bustle

And I dreamed of cute features.

Years passed. The storm is a rebellious gust

Dispelled old dreams

Your heavenly features.

In the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment

My days passed quietly

Without a deity, without inspiration,

No tears, no life, no love.

The soul has awakened:

And then you appeared again,

Like a fleeting vision

Like a genius of pure beauty.

And the heart beats in ecstasy,

And for him they rose again

And deity and inspiration,

And life, and tears, and love.

The vocal lyrics of the late period are rich and diverse, reflecting the trends of the new era, colored by the mood of Lermontov's meditation and tragic self-absorption. Sorrowful intonations are heard in the dramatic romances-mopologists “The Song of Margarita”, “You will soon forget me”, “Don’t say that your heart hurts”. At the same time, among M.I. Glinka’s late romances there are also bright and cheerful ones. These are the bacchanalian drinking songs based on the poems by A. S. Pushkin “The Healthy Cup” and “I Drink to Mary’s Health.”

The work of M.I. Glinka, which reflects scenes of folk life, folk character, feelings and experiences of an individual, contributed to the further development of music along the path of realism.

In Russian culture of the first half of the 19th century, romanticism has its own specifics. Belief in the Enlightenment ideals of reason, progress, basic individual rights - all this was still relevant in Russian social life of the first half of the century.
The image of a person received deep poetic embodiment in the work of the largest Russian portrait painter of the 1st third of the 19th century.
Orest Adamovich Kiprensky. (1782-1836).
The greatest master of romantic portraiture.
When you look at Kiprensky’s portraits, it seems that you see free people. None of his contemporaries managed to express this feeling of a new man in such a way.
Among the most significant works of Kiprensky are portraits of military personnel who took part in the anti-Napoleonic campaigns at the beginning of the century.

1809. Timing

Portrait of A.A. Chelishcheva. 1808 - early 1809 Tretyakov Gallery refers to the early period of O.A.’s creativity. Kiprensky.
The era of romanticism creates a completely special attitude towards the concept of childhood. If portraitists of the 18th century usually depicted a child as a small adult, then the romantics saw in him a special, unique world of personality that still remained pure and unaffected by the vices of adults.

Portrait of Countess Ekaterina Petrovna Rostopchina. 1809. Tretyakov Gallery.
Some of the female images he created are particularly charming.
It has no equal in all world painting of the 19th century, in terms of the power of expression of spiritual beauty, as if anticipating the image of Pushkin’s Tatyana.

While living in St. Petersburg, Kiprensky became close to the most prominent people of his century.
Romantic tendencies in Kiprensky’s work are embodied in the portrait of the famous Russian poet V.A. Zhukovsky.

Portrait of E.S. Avdulina. 1822-1823.
- one of the best works of late Kiprensky.
appears before the viewer as a man of great spiritual subtlety and nobility, possessing a deeply hidden inner world.

In the portrait of Pushkin, the artist accurately conveys the features of the poet’s appearance, but consistently refuses everything ordinary. Understanding the uniqueness of the task - to capture the appearance of the great poet - O.A. Kiprensky harmoniously combined the spirit of romantic freedom and the pathos of high classics.
Creative combustion.
« I see myself as if in a mirror, but this mirror flatters me».

O. A. Kiprensky. "Self-portrait". 1828

Tropinin, Vasily Andreevich(1776-1857) - Russian artist, academician, master of portraiture. By origin - a serf peasant. Tropinin failed to graduate from the Academy. Count Morkov interrupted his studies in 1804, summoning Kukavka to his Ukrainian estate. The young artist had to be a home painter and at the same time fulfill the duties of a yard man. From 1821 he lived permanently in Moscow, where he gained recognition and fame.
The images of people from the people created by Tropinin are widely known.

“Tropinin had few rivals in his artistic talent. In 1818, when he was still a serf and lived with his master on the Kukavka estate in Ukraine, he wrote “Portrait of a Son” - amazing in its picturesque charm and free manner of painting. This portrait of a blond, tanned boy glows, lives and breathes. After that, Tropinin worked for another forty years, immortalized a great many people, developed more or less stable methods of portraiture, improved in technique, but the portrait of his son remained unsurpassed, with the exception, perhaps, of the portrait of Pushkin, painted in the same year as Kiprensky and not inferior to him "(Dmitrieva N.A. A brief history of art. Issue III: Countries of Western Europe of the 19th century; Russia of the 19th century. - M.: Art, 1992. P. 198-200.).

The best in the circle of Tropinin portrait painting of the 1820s
The slightly raised upper lip gives the poet’s face a touch of restrained animation.
The lilac-brown robe is draped in wide, loose folds; The collar of the shirt is wide open, the blue tie is tied deliberately casually.
The color has the freshness of direct observation. The reflexes from the white-collar shirt, highlighting the chin and bare neck of the person being portrayed, are convincingly conveyed.

Already a famous artist, Tropinin created a type of homely, intimate portrait with elements of genre painting. As a rule, this is a half-length image of a person doing his usual activity.
The pretty, crafty girl is full of grace, understood by contemporaries as a special “pleasantness,” as something that “captures the heart,” but “impossible to understand with the mind.”
In the year the painting was painted, Vasily Andreevich Tropinin, the serf artist of Count Morkov, received his freedom. He was 47 years old. In the same year, he exhibited his “Lacemaker” at the Academy of Arts, which immediately gained popularity, which has not left it to this day.

Venetsianov Alexey Gavrilovich. 1780 – 1847. the first Russian painter who consciously chose the everyday genre as the basis of his work.
It is he who is credited with establishing the everyday genre in Russian art as an independent type of painting.
He developed a form of multi-figure genre painting, in which the landscape or interior often plays a large role. Venetsianov was also the first to draw attention to individual folk types. His painting is national and democratic.

In 1811, he was recognized by the Academy of Arts as “designated” for his self-portrait.

Venetsianov’s first fundamental work was the painting “The Barn,” which opened new paths in Russian painting.

The artist created an idealized poetic image of peasant life. Working outdoors allowed Venetsianov to use the effects of daylight and complicate the palette.

Bryullov Karl Pavlovich(1799-1852). Painter, draftsman. Master of historical painting, portrait painter, genre painter.
He overcomes the deadness of the canons of classicism with a romantic desire to fill the image with living feelings.

realistic principles formed the basis

The joy of being, a cheerful and full-blooded feeling of life, merging with the environment sparkles. The sun's rays penetrate the foliage of the vineyard, glide over the girl's hands, face, and clothes; an atmosphere of living connection between man and nature is created. The girl’s face with absolutely regular features and huge sparkling eyes is ideally beautiful, it seems almost porcelain (a frequent effect in Bryullov). The Italian type of appearance was then considered perfect, and the artist plays with it with pleasure.

The Society's committee, having received "Noon", cautiously reproached the artist for choosing a model that did not meet the classical ideals of St. Petersburg connoisseurs.

Epicurean line

Tragic line in creativity
The last day of Pompeii. 1830-1833. State Russian Museum Oil on canvas. 465.5 x 651
For the first time in Russian painting, classicism was combined with a romantic perception of the world. It should be noted that for K.P. For Bryullov, the truth of historical reality was important. He studied written sources about the tragedy in Pompeii (Pliny the Younger, Tacitus), as well as scientific research on archaeological excavations.
His heroes, at the last moment of their lives, demonstrate human dignity and greatness of spirit in the face of the blind elements of evil.
Unlike what we see in classic paintings, the compositional center here is given not to the main historical character (who simply does not exist), but to the deceased mother, next to whom is depicted a still living child, gripped by horror. The concept of the canvas is revealed in the contrast between life and death.

Thus, for the first time, the people entered Russian historical painting, although they were shown in a rather idealized way.

Portrait of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna with her daughter Maria. 1830. Russian Museum Ultimately, Bryullov came to the image of the Grand Duchess in motion. From now on, in large portraits he will use this technique, which helps to enhance the expressiveness of the image.

Rider. Portrait of Giovanina and Amazilia Pacini, pupils of Countess Yu.P. Samoilova. 1832. Tretyakov Gallery
By the early 1830s, K.P. Bryullov took one of the leading places in Russian and all Western European art. His fame as an outstanding master of portraiture was cemented by “The Horsewoman,” painted in Italy.
Bryullov's ceremonial portrait-painting is marked by innovative features. Unlike the heroes of ceremonial portraits of the 18th century, where the main task was to emphasize the social position of the person being portrayed and his public virtues, Bryullov’s characters primarily demonstrate spontaneity, youth, and beauty.

Portrait of His Serene Highness Princess Elizaveta Pavlovna Saltykova, born Countess Strogonova, wife of His Serene Highness Prince I.D. Saltykova. 1841. Timing

Portrait of Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova, born Countess Palen, leaving the ball with her adopted daughter Amazilia Paccini. 1842. Timing
the last significant work of K.P. Bryullov and one of his best works in the genre of ceremonial portrait-painting, characterized by an upbeat, romantic mood.
The artist presented his heroine in a queen’s fancy dress, against the backdrop of a lush theatrical curtain separating her from the ball participants.
emphasizes her dominant position in the crowd of people, the exclusivity of her nature.

Ivanov Alexander Andreevich(1806-1858) - painter, draftsman. Master of historical painting, landscape painter, portrait painter. Creativity A.A. Ivanova stands at the center of the spiritual quest of Russian culture of the 19th century.

The highest achievement in Russian historical painting is associated with the work of A. Ivanov. The son of Professor A.I. Ivanov, he studied at the Academy of Arts, brilliantly mastering composition and drawing (besides his father, his teachers were Egorov and Shebuev.

In 1824 Ivanov painted his first major oil painting, “Priam Asking Achilles for the Body of Hector” (Tretyakov Gallery), for which he received a small gold medal. Already in this early work, Ivanov reveals a desire for psychological expressiveness and archaeological accuracy. When the painting appeared at the exhibition, critics noted the artist’s attentive attitude to Homer’s text and the strong expression of the characters in the painting.

At the exhibition of 1827 Ivanov’s second painting appeared - “Joseph Interpreting the Dreams of the Baker and Butler” (Russian Museum), which was awarded a large gold medal from the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. Here the expression of faces and the incomparable plasticity of the figures far surpassed “Priam”, testifying to the exceptional talent of the artist and his rapid development. Illuminated figures against a dark background give the impression of statues. The flowing folds of Joseph's antique robe are treated with astonishing perfection. Joseph tells the baker something terrible to consider, pointing him to a relief depicting an execution carved on the wall of the prison. The cupbearer impatiently awaits with bright hope what the soothsayer will say about him. The baker and cupbearer look alike, like brothers, which is why the expressions of opposite feelings appear on their faces: despair and hope. The Egyptian relief composed by Ivanov shows that even then he was familiar with Egyptian archeology and had a subtle sense of style. In all his early works, Ivanov strove for strong emotional movements, expressed in an extremely clear form.

However, this picture almost led to the collapse of Ivanov’s career, which had begun so brilliantly. The image (in the form of a bas-relief) of an execution on the wall of the dungeon was interpreted as a daring allusion to the reprisal of Nicholas I against the Decembrists. Hood barely managed to escape Siberia. And despite the fact that Ivanov was awarded a large gold medal, the question of his business trip abroad dragged on. The Society for the Encouragement of Artists, intending to send Ivanov to Italy for improvement, decided to once again test his abilities by setting a new topic: “Bellerophon goes on a campaign against the Chimera” (1829, Russian Museum).

He was nevertheless awarded a foreign business trip. At this time, Ivanov was already the author of several paintings, completed huge-sized drawings from ancient statues - “Laocoon”, “Venus of Medicea”, “Borghesian Fighter” (all in the State Tretyakov Gallery), and many drawings from academic models. His early albums also contain a number of pencil and sepia sketches on historical and ancient themes, among which are a few sketches from nature; Portraits are even rarer. A small self-portrait (1828, Tretyakov Gallery), painted in oils, dates back to the time before his departure abroad.

As a tribute to classicism, Ivanov began in Rome a painting in the spirit of Poussin “Apollo, Hyacinth and Cypress engaged in music and singing” (1831-1834, Tretyakov Gallery), using monuments of ancient sculpture. The painting remained unfinished. Despite this, it is one of the most perfect works of Russian classicism. The beautifully grouped figures appear to be animated statues.

The tree foliage contrasts wonderfully with the color of the naked bodies: the delicate color of the body of Hyacinth, the dark color of Cypress and the figure of Apollo, as if carved from ivory. The picture is a musically harmonious, harmonic composition. A comparison of the sketches shows that Ivanov consciously sought the musical beauty of smooth lines and plastic perfection of form. The wonderfully inspired face of Apollo. Taking the head of Apollo Belvedere as the basis for the image, Ivanov breathed new life into it - the life of feeling. This method of processing ancient images became the main one for Ivanov throughout the first half of his work.

Re-reading the gospels, Ivanov finally found a plot that no one had taken on before: the first appearance of the Messiah (Christ) before the people awaiting the fulfillment of their cherished aspirations, predicted by John the Baptist. Ivanov perceived this plot as containing the entire meaning of the gospel. In his opinion, this plot could embody the high moral ideals of all humanity as their contemporaries understood them. Work on sketches for the painting began in the fall of 1833.

From the very beginning of his work, the artist conceived the plot more as historical than religious, eliminating all features of its mystical interpretation. He drew up a plan lasting a decade, in accordance with the extreme complexity of the plan. This plan frightened Ivanov’s distrustful St. Petersburg “benefactors” due to its duration and high cost. Despite threats from the Society for the Encouragement of Artists to deprive him of all his means of livelihood, Ivanov did not give up. He deeply studied the monuments of ancient art and monumental painting of the Italian Renaissance. Not having the opportunity to travel to Palestine in order to get acquainted with the folk types and landscapes of places associated with the Gospel legend, Ivanov looked for the corresponding nature in Italy.

In 1835 Ivanov finished and sent to St. Petersburg for the academic exhibition “The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection” (Russian Russian Museum); The success of the film exceeded the artist's expectations: he was given the title of academician and his stay in Italy was extended for another three years.

In the statuary nature of the figures in this picture (especially Christ, reminiscent of a statue by Thorvaldsen), in the conventional draperies and landscape, which serves as an almost neutral background for the figures, Ivanov paid the last tribute to academicism. This fully corresponded to the original intention of the picture, in which the artist intended to show his ability to depict the naked human body and draperies. However, along with this, he was fascinated by the task of depicting a crying beautiful female face and the movement of the figure. He did not dare to make more radical changes in the picture, although the compositions of Giotto he saw in Italy on the same subject gave rise to the idea of ​​completely abandoning the “official piece of nudity.”

The complex expression on Magdalene’s face (smile through tears) and the successfully found position of Christ’s legs (based on a deep knowledge of anatomy and giving his figure the illusion of movement) are the most realistic features of the picture in its general academic structure.

Having finished this work, the artist again devoted himself entirely to developing the main idea. Work on “The Appearance of Christ to the People” (1837-1857, Tretyakov Gallery) occupied most of Ivanov’s life. Numerous surviving materials (sketches, sketches, drawings) and extensive correspondence from the artist make it possible to reconstruct the main stages of this enormous work. The first sketches date back to 1833, therefore, they were made before the first trip to Italy.

In 1837 the composition of the painting was already so developed that the artist was able to transfer it to a large canvas, and the next year he shaded it and painted it in terdesien.

K1845 “The appearance of Christ to the people” was, in essence, over, with the exception of some particulars (the face of a slave, figures emerging from the water, the middle group).

Further work went in two directions - the utmost specification of the characters of the characters and the second - the study of the landscape on individual topics determined by the composition of the picture (foreground trees, earth, stones, water, background trees and mountains). It is possible that all this work was preceded by a search for the general tone of the painting, for which Ivanov wrote in Venice, in close proximity to the great Venetian colorists, a small sketch (“Sketch in Venetian tones”, 1839, Tretyakov Gallery), which largely predetermined the color of the painting “ The appearance of Christ to the people.”

At the end of 1838 there was some break in work. At this time, Ivanov met N.V. Gogol, who then arrived in Rome. They became friends. Their friendship was marked by Ivanov’s unexpected appeal to themes of people’s life. Under the influence of the writer, Ivanov created a number of genre watercolors depicting scenes from the life of ordinary people. They are poetic, vital and imbued with spiritual warmth. Complex multi-figure compositions are united by the action of light. The moon pours its calm light on a group of children and girls singing Ave Maria in chorus (“Ave Maria”, 1839, Russian Russian Museum), the warm lights of the candles are reflected by reflexes on their faces and clothes. Under the burning rays of the southern sun, a sweet scene (“Groom choosing earrings for the bride”, 1838, Tretyakov Gallery) is played out. The figures of the girls in the watercolor “October holiday in Rome” are full of relaxed movements. At Ponte Mole” (1842, Russian Museum). In the watercolor “October holiday in Rome. Scene in the Loggia” (1842, Tretyakov Gallery) depicts a playful dance. The rapid movements of the people surrounding the lanky Englishman are expressed by a complex and beautiful silhouette. Without Gogol's influence, the appearance of these genre scenes is inexplicable.

In all of Ivanov’s watercolors, the principle of psychological connection between human figures prevails over the principle of classical architectural composition. The artist clearly strove in them for the life-like truthfulness of the movements of the figures and their relationships.

In the first two genre watercolors, Ivanov was practically faced with lighting issues. This task was especially difficult in the watercolor “Ave Maria,” in which the cold and even moonlight is combined with the warm and tremulous light of candles and the soft light of a lantern in front of the image of the Madonna.

The problem of transmitting sunlight, which especially occupied the artist in the late 40s, was first posed by him in the aforementioned watercolor “The Groom Choosing Earrings for the Bride.” A comparison of two versions of this drawing (THG and GRM) shows that Ivanov sought to use lighting as a unifying principle.

K1845 “The appearance of Christ to the people” was, in essence, over, with the exception of some particulars (the face of a slave, figures emerging from the water, the middle group). To the right and left in the picture are people baptized in the waters of the Jordan, behind John is a group of future apostles, in the center and to the right are crowds of people excited by John’s words. In the foreground, the artist painted a slave who is preparing to dress his master. The action takes place in the Jordan Valley, the distant hills are covered with trees. A huge old tree shades the leaves of the central group.

To solve the problem: to depict humanity awaiting its liberation, Ivanov considered himself to have the right to use everything that had previously been achieved by world art. He drew examples of plastic art from ancient Greek sculpture, studying ancient originals in Rome and Florence, and studied the painting of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, Ghirlandaio and most of all Raphael.

Obviously, from the very first steps of working on the composition of the painting, Ivanov felt the need to organize human figures into groups, connected by commonality or, conversely, juxtaposed in deliberate contrasts. These groups were defined as follows: an old man and a young man emerging from the water, a group of disciples led by the Baptist and closed on the left by the figure of a skeptic, the foreground group of a rich man and a slave, and, finally, a group of trembling father and son flanking the entire composition on the right. In addition, many figures are placed in the shadows, in the middle of the picture in the crowd of people occupying the upper right side of the canvas. These figures are also organized into groups.

The figure of John the Baptist is of decisive importance. It is located almost in the center and organizes the entire composition with its powerful force. In his depiction of the Baptist, Ivanov used monuments of Italian painting and, above all, Raphael, which by no means deprived the image of its own expressiveness. John in the picture is full of fiery temperament; he burns people's hearts with his verb. With a stunningly powerful gesture, he points to the approaching Messiah. He was the first to see and recognize the Messiah. His gesture determines the movement of the entire compositional structure of the picture.

The artist set his goal to achieve in each of the characters the extremely typical expression of each person. character. He succeeded especially in the images of the Baptist, the apostles John, Andrew, Nathanael and the slave, the sketches of which are among the best. No wonder Kramskoy considered the Ivanovo Baptist “an ideal portrait.”

It is characteristic that a real portrait underlies every character, every type included in the picture. At the next stage, art attracts the heads of ancient sculptures, as if shaping them with the classical features of living nature.

“The Appearance of Christ to the People” combines the lofty idea of ​​human liberation with a monumental form.

By 1845 include sketches of the mural “The Resurrection of Christ,” intended for the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was built by K.A. Ton. During this period, Ivanov came up with the idea of ​​​​creating a whole series of paintings on biblical subjects. These paintings were supposed to cover the walls of a special public building (not a church, as the artist himself always emphasized). Their themes and sequence were more consistent with the book “The Life of Jesus” by D. Strauss, but were based on a deep and independent study of the primary sources by the artist himself. Ivanov intended to present here the evolution of human beliefs in their close interconnection and historical conditioning. In the cycle of sketches that embodied this plan, the problems of the historical destinies of the people, the relationship between the people and the individual, so typical of romantic historicism, received the most profound solution in comparison with all Russian historical painting of the 2/3 century. One is amazed by the abundance and endless variety of watercolor sketches made by Ivanov on biblical subjects (almost all of them are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery).

It is difficult to select the best among the sketches. Therefore, you should focus only on the more characteristic ones. Such, for example, is the sketch “Three Strangers Announce to Abraham the Birth of Isaac,” the composition of which amazes with its monumentality, the unity of man and nature, and the expressiveness of the figures. No less interesting is “Collecting Manna in the Desert” - a mass scene in which running people are captured by a joyful whirlwind, or “Procession of the Prophets”, full of powerful, stunning rhythm. Despite the fact that Ivanov’s plan remained only in sketches, these sketches belong to the greatest assets of art.

Its landscapes are wonderful. “Appian Way” (1845, Tretyakov Gallery). “The Bay of Naples near Castellammare” (1846, Tretyakov Gallery). Ivanov decisively took the path of plein air. In his painting, nature is not through myth, as in the works of the classics, but through reality.

Ivanov’s work, going far beyond the romantic ideals of the era, is the most powerful expression of the realistic orientation of Russian art in the mid-19th century.

In the first years of his retirement in Italy, in the early 1830s, Ivanov painted the beautiful painting “Apollo, Cypress and Hyacinth engaged in music and singing.”

Brilliant sketches of paintings for the “Temple of Humanity” he conceived. In “Biblical Sketches” Ivanov sought to organically combine the gospel truth with the historical truth, the legendary-mythical with reality, the sublime with the ordinary, the tragic with the everyday.

Art of the mid (40s – 50s) 19th century – the “Gogol” period of Russian culture

In Fedotov’s work, for the first time in Russian art, the program of critical realism was implemented. The “accusatory orientation” was also reflected in “An Aristocrat’s Breakfast”.

Fedotov performed the painting “The Widow” in several versions, consistently moving towards his goal - to show human misfortune as it really is.

The painting “Anchor, more anchor!” consistent in color - muddy red, and an ominous emotional mood. The canvas is truly tragic: in it the melancholy of unsightly everyday life and the meaninglessness of existence comes to the fore.

Russian artistic culture achieved great success in the first half of the 19th century. It was at this time that Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Griboyedov, Zhukovsky, Krylov were creating. This rapid flowering of artistic culture was associated with the rise of national self-awareness in the advanced circles of Russian society during the Patriotic War of 1812. The struggle for the liberation of the homeland from foreign intervention, which caused a wave of high patriotic feelings, could not but affect the phenomena of Russian art.

The advanced Russian ideology of that time took shape under the direct influence of the Patriotic War of 1812 and the noble revolutionary movement that took shape in the Decembrist program.
The Patriotic War raised people's self-awareness, feelings of patriotism and national pride to an unusually high level. The folk character of the war and the patriotic deeds of ordinary Russian people attracted the attention of the progressive public of Russia for a long time and caused a kind of revaluation of aesthetic values: folk images and national subjects took an extremely significant place in Russian art, incommensurate with the episodic role they played in the work of most masters XVIII century. The appeal to the people injected new strength into Russian artistic culture. Advanced creative trends were based on the range of ideas put forward by noble revolutionary thought.

Criticism of the time pointed to the “powerful direction of modern genius towards the people” in all areas of art. “Nationalism” became the central problem of advanced Russian culture in the twenties and thirties of the last century. Even reactionary publicists tried to use the concept of nationality, including it in the official formula of government policy (“Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality”). In contrast to the official interpretation of nationality in advanced artistic circles, a completely different understanding of it developed, formulated by one of the progressive art theorists in the early thirties: “By nationality I mean that patriotic animation of the fine arts, which, feeding on native impressions and memories, reflects in its works the native blessed heaven, native holy land, native precious traditions, native customs and morals, native life, native glory, native greatness.”

The first half of the 19th century was a bright page in Russian culture. All directions - literature, architecture, painting of this era are marked by a whole constellation of names that brought Russian art world fame. In the 18th century, the style of classicism dominated Russian painting. Classicism played a significant role at the very beginning of the 19th century. However, by the 1830s, this direction was gradually losing its social significance, and was increasingly turning into a system of formal canons and traditions. Such traditional painting becomes a cold, official art, supported and controlled by the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Subsequently concept of "academicism" began to be used to denote inert art, divorced from life.

He brought new views to Russian art romanticism- a European movement that developed at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries. One of the main postulates of romanticism, opposite to classicism, is affirmation of a person’s personality, his thoughts and worldview as the main value in art. Securing a person’s right to personal independence gave rise to a special interest in his inner world, and at the same time presupposed the artist’s freedom of creativity. In Russia, romanticism acquired its own peculiarity: at the beginning of the century it had heroic coloring, and during the years of the Nikolaev reaction - tragic. At the same time, romanticism in Russia has always been a form of artistic thinking, close in spirit to revolutionary and freedom-loving sentiments.

Having as its peculiarity the knowledge of a specific person, romanticism became the basis for the subsequent emergence and the formation of a realistic direction, established in art in the second half of the 19th century. A characteristic feature of realism was its appeal to the theme of modern folk life, the establishment of a new theme in art - the life of peasants. Here, first of all, it is necessary to note the name of the artist A.G. Venetsianova. The most fully realistic discoveries of the first half of the 19th century were reflected in the 1840s in the works of P.A. Fedotova.

Overall cultural life during this period was ambiguous and diverse: some prevailing trends in art were replaced by others. Therefore, researchers, when examining the art of the first half of the 19th century in more detail, usually divide it into two periods - the first and second quarters of the century. However, it is worth noting that this division is conditional. In addition, there is no need to talk about classicism, romanticism and realism in their pure form during this period: their differentiation, both chronologically and by characteristics, is not absolute.

Painting in the first half of the 19th century acquired much greater importance in the life of society than it did in the 18th century. The development of national self-awareness, caused by the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812, raised people's interest in national culture and history, in domestic talents. As a result, during the first quarter of the century, public organizations arose for the first time, the main task of which was the development of the arts. Among these organizations were such as Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and the Arts, Society for the Encouragement of Artists. Special magazines appeared, and the first attempts were made to collect and display Russian art. Thus, the small private “Russian Museum” of P. Svinin became famous in educated circles, and the Russian Gallery was created at the Imperial Hermitage in 1825. Since the beginning of the century, the practice of the Academy of Arts has included periodic exhibitions, which attracted many visitors. At the same time, a great achievement was the admission of ordinary people to these exhibitions on certain days, which, nevertheless, caused objections from some magazine critics.

Outstanding achievements in Russian art of the early 19th century are characterized by portrait painting. Throughout the century, the Russian portrait will be the genre of painting that most directly connected artists with society, with outstanding contemporaries. After all, as you know, artists received a large number of orders from individuals specifically for portraits.

OREST KIPRENSKY (1782-1836)

Orest Kiprensky, one of the greatest painters of the first half of the 19th century - Self-portrait (1). The art of this artist, like any great master, is heterogeneous. In his creative aspirations, Kiprensky is subject to influenced by both romanticism and classicism. The works of an artist even from the same period are often dissimilar. Kiprensky's best paintings highlight a romantic understanding of the human personality. In his works the artist endows a person with spiritual qualities- intelligence, nobility, character, ability to think and feel. That is why in his portraits Kiprensky mainly portrayed or prominent contemporaries– among his works are portraits of Pushkin, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky, heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812, or your close friends. The gallery of portraits created by him is the pride of Russian fine art. Immediately after graduating from the Academy of Arts Kiprensky devoted entirely to portraiture. One of the best works of the then young artist was portrait of Davydov (2). Kiprensky created the image of a Russian officer characteristic of the era - a participant in the struggle for the independence of his homeland. Kiprensky's high artistic skill was revealed in the emotional elation of the portrait and its richness of colors. In other portrait works and in a whole series of pencil drawings, the artist captured images of war participants, officers, and militias with whom he was personally well acquainted. In all of Kiprensky’s portraiture, along with the features of romantic elation, one can clearly see the desire for a realistic disclosure of human psychology. Of exceptional interest is portrait of A. S. Pushkin (3), truthfully capturing the image of the great poet for future generations. The importance of Kiprensky, a subtle draftsman and colorist, in Russian art of the first half of the 19th century is enormous.

Contemporaries compared his works with the genres of lyrical poetry, poetic dedication to friends, which was well common in Pushkin’s time. Kiprensky's portraits are always endowed with deep thoughtfulness; they seem to peer into the world. Kiprensky in many ways discovered new possibilities for himself in painting. Each of his portraits is distinguished by a new pictorial structure, well-chosen light and shadow, varied contrast - “Neapolitan girl with fruits” (4), “Gypsy with a branch of myrtle” (5), “Girl in a poppy wreath with a carnation in her hand (Mariuccia)” (6), “Young gardener” (7), “Portrait of E.P. . Rostopchina" (8). By truthfully conveying the individual features of his models, K. managed to embody great social content in his best portraits, to show the human dignity and depth of spiritual culture of the people depicted: behind their external calm, living human feelings are always felt.

The Nikolaev reaction that followed the defeat of the Decembrists forced the artist to leave again in 1828 for Italy, where he died.

VASILY TROPININ (1776-1857) –(9)

A significant phenomenon in the history of Russian painting was the work of V. Tropinin, a remarkable realist artist, a significant part of my life former serf.

Vasily Andreevich Tropinin was even somewhat older than Kiprensky, but unfavorable circumstances delayed the development of his talent for a long time.
In those years when Kiprensky created the portrait of Davydov, marking the pinnacle of Russian romantic painting, Tropinin was still an unknown serf artist on the Ukrainian estate of Count Morkov and combined the duties of a pastry chef and senior footman with painting. Due to the whim of the landowner, he was unable to complete his education at the Academy of Arts. Tropinin's youth was spent self-taught, despite obstacles, mastering technical skills and achieving professional excellence. In his studies, he chose the path that self-taught artists of his time usually followed: he worked hard and a lot from life and copied paintings in private art collections, to which he had access thanks to the connections of his landowner. He studied painting techniques not in an academic workshop, but from his own experience and from the works of old masters, and life in Ukraine, as the artist himself later said, replaced his trip to Italy.

This system of self-education, with all its shortcomings, could still have some positive sides for an artist with great and original talent. Freedom from routine academic teaching partly helped Tropinin maintain intact the purity and originality of his artistic perceptions. Lively communication with nature and knowledge of folk life, supported by constant work from life, contributed to the development of realistic tendencies inherent in Tropinin’s talent. But in his younger years, forcibly separated from the artistic environment, he was not yet at the level of the advanced tasks of the art of his time. Tropinin's work, even at the end of the 1810s, was similar in style not to the works of his peers, but to the art of the 18th century.

The long-awaited freedom from serfdom came only in 1823, when Tropinin was already forty-seven years old; The flowering of his talent dates back to this time. It was during this period that his own, independent artistic system arose, which uniquely reworked the legacy of classicism and painting techniques of the 18th century, and the one created by Tropinin finally took shape. genre of intimate everyday portrait. Experts call Tropinin’s portraits the “antipode” of Kiprensky’s portraits, since his paintings show a free, uninhibited, “homely” person.
“A portrait of a person is painted for the memory of people close to him, people who love him,” Tropinin himself said; This somewhat naive statement contains, in essence, a whole program that characterizes Tropinin’s tasks and his attitude to reality. In Tropinin's portraits it is conveyed intimate, “homely” appearance of the people of his era; Tropinin’s characters do not “pose” in front of the artist and the viewer, but are captured as they were in private life, around the family hearth.
Tropinin turned to genre motifs, dedicating depiction of a simple working person a number of works. In his works, he pays great attention to the study of nature - all his portraits truthfully reproduce the life around the artist, there is nothing deliberate or contrived in them - “Girl with a Doll” (10), “Old Coachman Leaning on a Whip” (11), “Lacemaker” (12). His softly painted portraits are distinguished by high pictorial merits and ease of perception, human images are perceived as characteristic truthfulness and calmness without much inner excitement . Some of these works, despite their quite obvious realistic character, have features of sentimentalism - “Girl with a pot of roses” (13), “Woman in the window. (Treasurer)” (14).

At the end of 1826, S. A. Sobolevsky, a close friend of Pushkin, approached Tropinin with a proposal to paint a portrait of the poet. The attributes of “homeliness” - a robe, an unbuttoned shirt collar, disheveled hair - are perceived not as evidence of the intimate ease of the poser, but rather as a sign of that “poetic disorder” with which romantic art so often associated the idea of ​​inspiration “Portrait of Pushkin” (15). In its figurative structure, the portrait of Pushkin echoes the works of contemporary romantic painting by Tropinin, but at the same time Tropinin managed to create a romantic image without sacrificing the realistic accuracy and truthfulness of the image. Pushkin is depicted sitting, in a natural and relaxed pose. The face, shaded by the whiteness of the shirt lapel, is the most intense colorful spot in the picture and is also its compositional center. The artist did not seek to “embellish” Pushkin’s face and soften the irregularity of his features; but, conscientiously following nature, he managed to recreate and capture it high spirituality. Contemporaries unanimously recognized the impeccable resemblance to Pushkin in Tropinin’s portrait. In comparison with the famous portrait of Pushkin by Kiprensky, Tropinin’s portrait seems more modest and, perhaps, intimate, but is not inferior to it either in expressiveness or in pictorial power.

In the first quarter of the 19th century, important processes took place in the area LANDSCAPE PAINTING. If the landscapes of previous artists were largely conventional and deliberately constructed, and, as a rule, they were painted in the studio, without nature or had very little to do with it, now landscape painters bring much more into their work life truth, keen observation and emotional beginning. The most significant place here belongs, of course, to Sylvester Shchedrin.

SYLVESTER SHCHEDRIN (1791- 1830)

Master of Russian landscape romanticism and lyrical interpretation of nature. The work of Sylvester Feodosievich Shchedrin marked the boundary between old and new in the history of Russian landscape. The artist brought to perfection what his predecessors had strived for and laid the foundation for a new realistic development of Russian landscape painting. His works clearly show a persistent work from life. He was the first Russian painter to turn to plein air work. All his landscapes accurately convey the character of nature. Shchedrin also introduces people into his landscapes, however, no longer in the form of faceless figures for scale, as was the case before, but living people who are truly connected with nature. In his best works, he successfully overcame the conventional, “museum” flavor and truthfully conveyed the natural state of nature- nuances of sunlight, a light blue haze in the distance, gentle tints of the blue sky. He had a subtle lyrical sense of nature.

After graduating from the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in 1818. arrived in Italy and lived for more than 10 years. He deserved something incredible for those times. popularity among Italians Those who wanted to buy his paintings sometimes had to write many copies of their most successful works, which quickly sold out. His famous works are “New Rome “Castle of the Holy Angel” (17), Mergellina Promenade in Naples (18), Grand Harbor on the island of Capri (19) etc. Having overcome the tradition of the “heroic landscape” and the understanding of nature developed at the Academy of Arts as a reason for historical memories, turning to living, contemporary reality and real nature, Shchedrin at the same time overcame the conventional academic scheme for the artistic solution of the landscape theme.

Having lived a short but creative life, Shchedrin was never able to return to Russia. Magnificent Italian landscapes reflected all the unique beauty of the nature of this region, which many Russian artists imagined as a paradise - a promised land - “Grotto in Florence” (20), “Italian landscape. Capri" (21), "Moonlit Night in Naples" (22), "View of Lake Nemi in the vicinity of Rome."

In this small canvas, which belongs to the best creations of Russian landscape painting, the main features of Shchedrin’s new artistic system appear with full clarity. “View of Lake Nemi” is alien to those deliberate effects that constitute the very essence of the academic landscape. In the Shchedrin landscape there are no classical groves, no waterfalls, no majestic ruins; idealization is replaced by a living and truthful recreation of the image of nature. The basis of the new method is not the “composition” of a landscape, but direct and precise observation of nature.
A narrow path, lined with old trees, winds along the shore and leads the viewer's gaze into the depths of the picture. In the foreground there are several figures: two peasant women are talking on the shore, a monk is walking, and a boy driver is leading a donkey behind him. Further on you can see the calm, light waters of the lake; in the depths, covering the horizon, a high mountain covered with forest turns blue. Soft diffused light floods the picture, sun glare falls through the tree branches onto the sandy path, the water glistens silver in the sun, and a transparent airy veil envelops near and distant objects.

Realistic mastery of space is one of Shchedrin’s main achievements in this film. There are no backstage scenes, no object markers marking the depth. Linear perspective gave way to aerial perspective. True, the three traditional plans are still preserved in the picture, but the road going deeper connects them together and makes the space continuous. The artist is no longer satisfied with the truthful reproduction of individual details; he achieves the integrity of the overall impression and the organic unity of all the elements that make up the landscape. Transmission of light and air, unity of lighting, connecting objects and spatial plans, is the main means through which the picture acquires this integrity.
The painting system developed by Shchedrin based on the study of nature in the open air (the so-called plein air painting) opens a new page in the history of landscape. It is not surprising that the innovation of the Russian master was not immediately appreciated and caused protests from conservative art criticism. It seemed to the ideologists of academic art that Shchedrin “adhered to a slavish imitation of nature, not allowing deviations even in favor of the elegant.” Indeed, the artist consciously abandoned conventional and fictitious effects, which were considered “elegant” in circles close to the Academy of Arts. But, of course, he was very far from passively copying nature. His painting not only captures the real appearance of the shores of Lake Nemi, but also reveals with deep and genuine penetration the poetry of Italian nature, its sunny tranquility and bright, peaceful harmony.
The artist became interested in another motif - a terrace covered with grapes overlooking the sea - “Veranda entwined with grapes” (24).

ALEXEY VENETSIANOV (1780-1847) – (25)

Venetsianov is called founder of Russian genre (everyday) painting. This is not entirely true - he had predecessors back in the 18th century. But it begins with Venetsianov rise of realistic trends in Russian art, accompanied by an appeal to the world of national and folk images and an increase in interest in modern life.

Venetsianov's creativity is imbued with patriotic and authentic democratic attitude. The era of social upsurge associated with the Patriotic War opened the artist’s eyes to the deep moral qualities of a simple Russian man from the people, to his heroism and human dignity. IN Russian serf peasantry Venetsianov, an artist-humanist, was able to discern the features not of a slave, but, on the contrary, of a higher human type.

Wonderful Russian genre painter and portrait painter Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov for the first time in Russian painting combined images of peasants and national nature. Venetsianov - the creator of an entire gallery peasant portraits - “The Sleeping Shepherd” (26).

The painting “The Sleeping Shepherd” occupies a prominent place in this cycle. She is one of Venetsianov's most poetic creations. The artist depicted peasant children with particular warmth and lyrical elation. The purity and harmonious clarity of his artistic thinking perfectly suited the tasks of recreating a child's world. None of the Russian masters of his time achieved such insight, such acute truthfulness and at the same time such power of poetic feeling in the depiction of children's images and childhood experiences. This, however, does not exhaust the content of “The Sleeping Shepherd.” Here all the main features of Venetsianov’s artistic language, the entire structure of his imaginative thinking, all the progressive aspects of his art, but at the same time the historically explainable limitations of his realism appear clearly and clearly. There is no action in The Sleeping Shepherdess. A peasant boy is depicted falling asleep in a field; he sits on the bank of a narrow river, leaning against the trunk of a large old birch tree, and behind him in the background of the picture opens a typical Russian landscape with a rickety hut, rare fir trees and endless fields that stretch to the horizon. But deep emotional content is embedded in this simple plot. Venetsianov’s painting is imbued with a feeling of peace and tranquility, a lyrical love for nature and man.
The main theme of the picture is the harmonious fusion of man with nature, and Venetsianov undoubtedly echoes here the sentimentalism of the late 18th century. In “The Shepherdess” there are no traces of deliberate posing; on the contrary, the entire appearance of the sleeping boy is marked by features of lively and relaxed naturalness. Venetsianov with particular care emphasizes the national Russian type in him and gives his face an expression of genuine touching spiritual purity. Critics sometimes reproached Venetsianov for the somewhat mannered pose of a shepherdess, but this reproach is unfair - it is the pose of the sleeping boy, with its peculiar numbness, which well conveys the state of sleep, that testifies to the artist’s keen observation and the closeness of his images to living nature. The landscape plays a particularly significant role in the picture. It no longer becomes a “background” for the image of a person, but an independent and essential means in conveying feelings and in constructing an image. It was in landscape that Venetsianov emerged as the founder of a new direction, which was later widely developed by Russian art of the 19th century. Venetsianov turned to the simple, “unadorned” nature of his native country and recreated it not only with careful accuracy, but also with a deep lyrical feeling.

The image of nature, just like the image of man, in Venetsianov’s art becomes the bearer of an idyllic worldview.

"Fortune telling by cards" (27), "Reapers" (28), "Peasant woman with a scythe and rake (Pelageya" (29), "Bathers" (30), "On the arable land. Spring" (31) . In his works of art, the painter expresses his ideological and aesthetic position. Venetsianov showed the spiritual attractiveness of the peasants, asserted his personality, thereby defending his human rights. In his works depicting peasants, the artist sought to reveal spiritual and physical beauty of a simple Russian person. The painter deeply sympathized with the peasant lot, put a lot of effort into alleviating the situation of serf artists, but at the same time he was far from social criticism. Venetsianov’s work was greatly influenced by the classical heritage: he was not afraid to use the means of old painting in his works. At the same time, being a realist in his aspirations, along with the sublime harmony of the classicists, he was close to the respect for the individual characteristic of romanticism. The broad appeal of the “father of the Russian genre” to the peasant theme was a genuine artistic revelation for that time and was warmly received by the leading part of Russian society.

Venetsianov's innovation was manifested not only in the fact that he turned to a range of images that were new in Russian painting, but also in the fact that to implement them he developed new realistic visual means. Venetsianov openly broke with the old conventional art of the Academy and called to learn from life, from nature, to study it and imitate it.

Great importance of Venetsianov as a teacher. On his Safonkovo ​​estate, he created an art school, in which a whole galaxy of painters, the so-called Venetians, were educated. These artists, following the precepts of their teacher, worked primarily in the field of genre, depicting domestic life, street scenes, the work of peasants and artisans, and rural landscapes.

The exorbitant expenses associated with the need to maintain the school and provide for its students placed a heavy burden on the estate. In the end, he was forced to mortgage the estate to the Board of Guardians. Trying to somehow improve his financial situation, Venetsianov took on commissioned work. For the most part, these were portraits and icons for churches. On December 4, 1847, having completed sketches of icons for one of the Tver churches, he wanted to personally take them to Tver. On the way down the steep mountain, the horses began to skid, Venetsianov was thrown out of the sleigh, and he became entangled in the reins. The troika dragged the already lifeless body to the village of Poddubye.

KARL BRYULLOV (1799-1852) - (32)

Karl Petrovich Bryullov - an outstanding Russian historical painter, portrait painter, landscape painter, author of monumental paintings; winner of honorary awards: large gold medals for the paintings “The Appearance of Three Angels to Abraham at the Oak of Mamre” (1821) and “The Last Day of Pompeii” (1834), Order of Anna, III degree; Member of the Milan and Parma Academies, the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, professor of the St. Petersburg and Florence Academies of Arts, honorary free associate of the Paris Academy of Arts.

In the family of academician of ornamental sculpture P.I. Brullo, all seven children had artistic talents. Five sons: Fedor, Alexander, Karl, Pavel and Ivan became artists. But the glory that fell to Karl overshadowed the successes of the other brothers. Meanwhile, he grew up as a weak and frail child, practically did not get out of bed for seven years and was so exhausted by scrofula that he “became an object of disgust for his parents.”

Karl Pavlovich Bryullov was one of the brightest, and at the same time controversial artist in Russian painting of the 19th century. Bryullov had a brilliant talent and independent way of thinking. Despite the trends of the times (the influence of romanticism), the artist was unable to completely get rid of the classicist canons. Perhaps that is why his work was highly valued by the far from advanced St. Petersburg Academy of Arts: in his youth he was its student, and later became an emeritus professor. However, with the exception of Fedotov, the artist did not have students of significant talent. His followers for the most part became superficial salon painters, having adopted only some of Bryullov’s external techniques. Nevertheless, during his lifetime, Bryullov, or “the great Karl,” as the elite nicknamed him, was revered not only in Russia, but also by many prominent people in Europe. In the second half of the 19th century, during the heyday of realism, artists and critics saw in Bryullov only a representative of an “academic” trend that was unacceptable to them. Many years passed before the artist took his rightful place in the history of Russian art.

Bryullov was a man of enormous talent, which he demonstrated in a wide variety of genres of art. Development Russian historical painting, portrait, drawing, decorative painting owes a lot to his work. In each of these genres, the virtuoso skill of this remarkable artist has left a deep mark.
Having received his initial education from his father, a professor at the Academy of Arts, and subsequently at the Academy itself, Bryullov discovered outstanding artistic abilities from his youth.

While a pensioner in Rome and having studied the classical heritage, he produced works that immediately revealed not only the maturity of his talent, but also the fruitfulness of his search for realistic expressiveness of the artistic image. Such paintings by Bryullov as "Italian morning" (33), “Noon” and some others, dedicated to the life of the Italian people, evoked a reproach from defenders of classicism in St. Petersburg for the young artist’s excessive commitment to real life. This did not bother Bryullov at all, and he continued to work on his largest canvas with great enthusiasm. "The last day of Pompeii" (34), which brought him fame as the best painter of the era. Having done a huge amount of preliminary work, he created a truly dramatic epic, the romantic elation of the images of which made a colossal impression on his contemporaries. This painting was a triumph of Russian fine art, convincing evidence of its maturity.

The understanding of the historical theme expressed in “The Last Day of Pompeii” directly echoes the range of historical ideas developed by advanced Russian literature and social thought of the 1820-1830s.
Unlike previous historical painting with its cult of heroes and emphasized attention to the individual, opposed to the impersonal crowd, Bryullov conceived “The Last Day of Pompeii” as a mass scene in which the only and true hero would be the people. All the main characters in the film are almost equal exponents of its theme; The meaning of the picture is embodied not in the depiction of a single heroic act, but in a careful and accurate transmission of the psychology of the masses. Work on “The Last Day of Pompeii” dragged on for almost six years.

The theme of the painting is taken from ancient Roman history.
Pompeii (or rather Pompeii) - an ancient Roman city located at the foot of Vesuvius - on August 24, 79 AD, as a result of a powerful volcanic eruption, it was filled with lava and covered with stones and ash. Two thousand residents (of which there were about 30,000 in total) died on the streets of the city during a stampede.
For more than one and a half thousand years, the city remained buried underground and forgotten. Only at the end of the 16th century, during excavation work, a place was accidentally discovered where a lost Roman settlement had once been located. Since 1748, archaeological excavations began, especially intensified in the first decades of the 19th century.

In the center of the picture is the prostrate figure of a young woman who fell to her death from a chariot. It can be assumed that in this figure Bryullov wanted to symbolize the entire dying ancient world; a hint of such an interpretation is also found in the reviews of contemporaries. It is no coincidence that next to the central figure of the murdered woman the artist depicted a beautiful baby, as a symbol of the inexhaustible power of life. In the picture there is both a pagan priest and a Christian priest, as if personifying the departing ancient world and the Christian civilization emerging on its ruins.

Being a painter of great talent, Bryullov destroyed the narrow framework of academic canons with his works. His works were invariably distinguished by their breadth of concept.
In his work the artist mainly paid attention to the person, revealing the power of his mind and affirming the nobility of his aspirations. In every work of Bryullov, in any of his canvases and in any of his drawings, love and respect for man are invariably embodied - “The Genius of Art” (35), “Narcissus Looking into the Water” (36), “Sleeping Juno” (37).

The artist’s achievements in the field of portraiture are not accidental. Bryullov printed a whole series of images of his contemporaries. Along with official commissioned portraits, he left us a number of deep realistic images of artists, people of his circle - writers, artists, actors - “Horsewoman” (38), “Fortune Telling Svetlana” (39), “Portrait of Princess Volkonskaya” (40), “Turkish Woman” (41), “Dream of a Nun” (42), “Profile of Glinka’s Head” (43).

ALEXANDER IVANOV (1806-1858)

A new and even more significant page in the history of Russian painting was the work of Alexander Ivanov. Having received an art education in St. Petersburg, Ivanov, as a pensioner of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, was sent to Italy to improve and study classical art.
Raised by his father, a professor of historical painting at the Academy of Arts, in the traditions of Russian classicism, Ivanov acutely felt the decline of this style in new historical conditions and the collapse of the aesthetic ideals and ideas that had recently dominated. He set the goal of his entire life to return art to its social significance. The creative achievements of the great classical artists, in his opinion, should have been linked with new advanced ideas of Russian society. “To combine Raphael’s technique,” ​​he wrote, “with the ideas of a new civilization - this is the task of art at the present time.”

“The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene” (44), - belongs to the early period of Ivanov’s work and has all the features inherent in classicism: a balanced composition, distribution of figures and objects according to plans, smooth pattern and local color, emotional expressiveness in the interpretation of traditional mythological and evangelical themes.

The leading importance for Ivanov is the images of the art of the Italian Renaissance. The painting ends the early period of the artist’s work “Apollo, Hyacinth and Cypress, engaged in music and singing” (44a), created by Ivanov already in Rome, which is distinguished by its unusually subtle compositional and coloristic harmony and the poetic sublimity of its interpretation of the images of ancient myth. This is antiquity perceived through the Renaissance. The artist seems to reveal the hidden divine meaning of nature.

The great Russian artist Alexander Andreevich Ivanov enriched Russian and European painting of the 19th century with the depth of philosophical thought. In his work, Ivanov raised many problems of contemporary life: the artist was the first in Russian painting to raise question about social inequality of people. His worldview was formed under the influence of N.V. Gogol, with whom the artist was friends during these years. Gogol largely influenced Ivanov’s ideas about the educational tasks of art. Ivanov realized educational and prophetic role of the artist, he believed that art should serve the transformation and moral improvement of humanity. The artist sought to comprehend