Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

anyone for anything.’ ”

Were these predictions legends or fact? At the very least they were characteristic of the atmosphere around the great poets. In their lifetime, but especially after their deaths, both Pushkin and Lermontov were turned into Romantic figures, surrounded by rumors, gossip, and posthumous legends.

A Romantic hero had to have a commensurate appearance. Lermontov’s eyes, like those of an unattractive woman, became the feature most mentioned; allegedly they were mesmerizing, with pupils that started moving quickly, “like an animal’s,” in moments of agitation. It was said that only the famous painter Karl Briullov could depict Lermontov properly, “since he painted not portraits, but gazes, putting fire in the eye.”

Briullov was the most celebrated Russian painter of the era, the only one to have achieved real success even in Europe, where his 1833 masterpiece The Last Day of Pompeii was a hit. He was, like Lermontov, not tall, with a big head and broad shoulders, but he had the face of Apollo, framed by luxuriant hair.

Like Lermontov, Briullov was a man out of Romantic legend, the personification of the idea expressed by the mad poet Konstantin Batyushkov: “Live as you write, and write as you live.”¹⁷ When he was seducing women, Briullov would tell them, “Don’t you know that every person is a novel, and what a novel! But God spare you from looking into my novel!—There are such black pages in it that they would soil your pretty little fingers.”¹⁸

When Briullov exhibited The Last Day of Pompeii at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, the enormous canvas that depicted with operatic melodrama a terrifying moment of natural cataclysm, a volcano spilling its lava on the ancient Roman city, captured the imagination of the northern capital, from ordinary folk to the emperor.

Anatole Demidov, a wealthy Russian who lived in Europe, had commissioned the painting and paid 40,000 francs for it; he presented it to Nicholas I, who “graced this gift with his magnanimous acceptance” and awarded Briullov the Order of St. Anna, Third Degree. The tsar summoned Briullov from Europe and appointed him as a professor at the academy. That moment began the unprecedented relationship between Nicholas and the painter.

The Imperial Academy of Arts was closely supervised by Nicholas I. He not only appointed and fired directors and teachers, he controlled the curricula, student competitions, and all commissions, observing their execution and giving “advice” (read: commands) on what to improve in a painting, sculpture, or architectural project. He considered himself a particular expert in battle and historical painting (he wasn’t bad at drawing).

Founded in 1757 by Empress Elizabeth I, in 1850 the academy was moved to Nicholas’s Ministry of the Imperial Court, and he turned it into a bureaucratic institution that functioned in strict accordance with the official Table of Ranks. Artists were given ranks equal to civil servants, with quasimilitary discipline and a detailed system of rewards and punishments.

At first this concept had a rational element: it helped turn Russian artists into respected members of society by putting order into their rise up the state ladder. But naturally, there was a danger that soon manifested itself: dressed in impressive uniforms with gold braid and medals and orders, artists began to feel like officials, with diminishing creative results. Among these obedient and cautious bureaucrats with palettes and brushes, Briullov was like a “lawless comet” in the gray St. Petersburg sky.

Yes, Nicholas valued talent, but he valued order, discipline, and zeal even more. The emperor hated indolence, drunkenness, and negligence in Russian artists, according to reminiscences of contemporaries. To everyone’s horror, Briullov worked only when the mood struck him and periodically went on legendary drunken benders; even though he was a professor at the academy he somehow managed to never wear the uniform—not even on formal occasions—and his behavior should have outraged the emperor. But no. Something about the “great Karl” fascinated Nicholas, who forgave Briullov’s romantic peccadilloes that would have been unthinkable for anyone else.

Everyone in Russia tried to be in the tsar’s good graces, but not Briullov. In that sense, the artist was even more independent than Pushkin, who had also showed the tsar his lion’s claws from time to time.

Examples of Briullov’s affronts are numerous, each more colorful than the last. Nicholas visited his studio unexpectedly, and the artist refused to come out: he was not well, he claimed. Nicholas ordered a series of paintings depicting his Guards regiments on parade, but the artist replied that he did not know how to paint parades and would not do it. Briullov also rejected the tsar’s pet idea for a historical painting—Ivan the Terrible praying with his wife in a peasant hut during the taking of Kazan.

It got worse. Briullov did everything he could to avoid the most desirable commission possible—portraits of Nicholas and his family. In the summer of 1837, Nicholas invited the artist to his summer residence in Peterhof, where Briullov began a double portrait on horseback of the empress and her daughter. He painted sitting by the window in a garden pavilion, while the royal riders posed outside.

A downpour began. The court physician, worried about the empress’s frail health, tried to stop the session, but she refused: “Don’t bother him while he is working!” The empress and her daughter were soaked to the skin. On that occasion, Briullov played the role of enraptured genius to the hilt, but he never did complete the portrait.

Once, Briullov was summoned to the Winter Palace to paint another daughter of the tsar. Nicholas came in during the session and as usual made suggestions. The painter put down his brush. “I can’t continue, my hand is trembling with fear.” The contemporary who noted Briullov’s reply added, “Artists will understand the mockery, but I don’t know whether or not the emperor did.”¹⁹

Of course Nicholas did, but he pretended not to be offended. He wanted a portrait by Briullov as a necessary attribute of imperial majesty. But even his own portrait created a problem. The tsar informed Briullov that he would come to his studio to pose, and then was twenty minutes late. When he arrived, Nicholas was told by Briullov’s terrified apprentice that the artist “expected Your Majesty, but knowing that you are never late, thought that you had canceled the session.”

The perplexed Nicholas left Briullov’s studio, murmuring, “What an impatient man!”²⁰ Work on the portrait ended before it began.

Briullov positioned himself as a Romantic and, therefore, free figure. “It was easier for him to anger the Sovereign and bear his wrath than to paint his portrait,” a contemporary noted. But there was an area where the tastes and preferences of the artist and tsar coincided: erotic art.

Nicholas liked pictures of buxom, voluptuous women. Briullov was a specialist of that genre. His early work Italian Morning, depicting a beauty with bared breasts, ended up in the imperial family’s private collection. Nicholas was so pleased with it that he commissioned a painting in pendant, in the same spirit. So Italian Noon, slightly less erotic but no less tempting, came to be.

Nicholas thought himself a moral person. His treatment of his wife was markedly courtly. (She was his first woman.) But that did not keep him from enjoying his enormous collection of erotic drawings, which experts