Portrait of Yulia Samoilova Bryullov. Karl Bryullov
Karl Bryullov.
Portrait of Yu.P. Samoilova with Giovanina Pacini and the black arap boy.
(Private collection, California, USA)
In 1875, in an atmosphere of poverty close to destitution, a childless and capricious old woman was dying in Paris, living only in memories of what had happened and what would die with her. Neither the Milanese nor the St. Petersburg relatives seemed to care about the lonely woman who had once flashed across the Russian horizon “like a lawless comet in the circle of calculated luminaries.” It was Countess Yu.P. Samoilova; she was buried in one of the Parisian cemeteries, consigned to oblivion.
K. D. Krueger, author of Remarkable Women of the 19th Century, wrote:
“In the 30s of the 19th century, a new type of high-society woman, free, daring, brilliant, arose in society, under the influence of the ideas of romanticism. Such ladies were called “lionesses.” They read the novels of George Sand, smoked, disregarded conventions and often had a very stormy personal life.”
Countess Yulia Pavlovna fully corresponded to this characteristic: independent, educated, rare for a woman of that time, well versed in art, music, literature, she listened only to the voice of her heart and did only what it, restless, told her!
Always unpredictable, Yulia Pavlovna was known as an original in Italy. An atmosphere of brilliance surrounded her everywhere. The countess gathered the cream of Italian society - composers, artists, painters, diplomats. She patronized young talents and often paid for opera productions at La Scala. In those days, among her guests were young Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Pacini.
Money flowed like a river, but she had countless amounts of it. Yulia Pavlovna was still passionately carried away. It seemed like there would be no end to the fleeting romances...
From the outside it might seem that Yulia Pavlovna is capable of bringing only suffering and misfortune to men, but for Karl Bryullov she became his savior...
She forgot, over time, when and how she was “struck by lightning” of a passionate attractive feeling of Love for a small, fragile man with a face, thin and expressive, like that of an ancient Greek god, hard of hearing in one ear, and somehow touchingly - gracefully bowing head towards the person he was talking to.
Did this happen immediately, from the moment of their first meeting, in Rome, with Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, in a few minutes, when they both said to each other a dozen meaningless, socially amiable words, although Bryullov looked at her incessantly; or did it happen much later, only later, when the “invaluable friend Brishka” was already drawing in her presence sketches for the painting that took six years of his life: “The Last Day of Pompeii”?!
She could never give an exact answer, but she knew that from their very first meeting she became as if “bewitched” to him forever.
Who is he and who is she? Is it fitting for him, a toiler from a family of toilers, to gaze at her beauty?
Petersburg refused to even send Karl pension money, and next to him appeared a woman who knew no limits to passions and expenses, who sometimes visited France, where she had the Grousset estate, overflowing with family treasures. Finally, how beautiful is her palazzo in Milan, and even better is the villa on Lake Como, where she was visited by the composers Rossini and Donizetti...
Samoilova was smart and, it seems, she herself guessed what was oppressing the poor painter.
So be it, I agree to be humiliated by you.
- You? - Bryullov was surprised.
- Certainly! If I consider myself an equal to the emperor, then why don’t you, my dear Brishka, make me your slave, forever conquered by your talent? After all, talent is also a title that elevates the artist not only above the aristocracy, but even above the power of crowned despots...
Bryullov painted portraits of her, considering them unfinished, because Yulia Pavlovna did not like to pose - there was no time! She always had no time. On one of the canvases she is represented returning from a walk, she impulsively runs into the room - under the admiring gaze of the girl and the blackamoor servant. Of the portraits of Samoilova, two are known. Others disappeared without a trace, but remained in the memory of contemporaries. One of the surviving “Samoilov with his pupil Giovanina Pacini and the Little Arab” is in the California Museum. It was from this portrait that the Italian public was delighted, and its creator was enthusiastically compared with the brilliant Rubens and Van Dyck).
Finally, “The Last Day of Pompeii” broke out, and it glorified the painter - immediately and for centuries!
Bryullov became the idol of Italy: they followed him like a champion who had lifted an unprecedented weight, masters invited him to visit, were eager to know his opinion, highly valued every stroke of Bryullov’s pencil, and finally, Karl Pavlovich was pestered with orders.
It is interesting that in Pompeii the artist depicted it three times.
Here she is next to him (the artist himself saves the attributes of art) with a jug on her head
Here Samoilova is like a mother with two daughters, waiting for death in a close embrace. (The skeletons of three women in this position were found during excavations).
At first they appeared everywhere together. A stately beauty and short, with an impressive but large head, expansive Karl. We traveled around Italy together. Judging by the letters, it was a passionate feeling.
“My friend Brishka...” she wrote to him in letters in 1827. “I love you more than I can explain, I hug you and will be spiritually committed to you until the grave.”
And later she tenderly confirmed: “I love you, I adore you, I am devoted to you, and I recommend myself to your friendship. For me, she is the most precious thing in the world.”
Karl responded with warm reciprocity. “My faithful friend,” Bryullov spoke tenderly of her...
And in a letter to Alexander Bryullov, the brother of her lover, the countess wrote quite frankly that she and “Karl-Bryshka” would like to unite their destinies. What prevented them both from doing this, since Countess Yulia Pavlovna was the artist’s only true love throughout his life? Never again later, after breaking up with her (in 1845-46, Countess Samoilova went to Italy, married the Italian singer Perry, and Bryullov could not find traces of her there, although he made futile efforts!) will never be given him to experience this combined feeling of delight and at the same time faithful, almost masculine friendliness, which the Countess gave him!
If secular rumor accused Samoilova of frivolity, then Bryullov, who glorified her in his paintings, was also fickle.
The nature of the relationship between Samoilova and Bryullov was unprecedented at that time. None of them encroached on each other's personal freedom.
That’s why she asked about the love pranks of her close friend at the time of separation: “Tell me, where do you live and who do you love? ..”
She herself also did not hide her love stories. And at a distance, their relationship acquired, so to speak, a “romantic” character.
She knew that they were surprisingly similar in souls, hearts, and perceptions of the world. They always understood each other perfectly, did not encroach on each other’s freedom, there was no secret, no secrecy, no banal vulgar jealousy between them: everyone could, without false embarrassment, tell each other about their fleeting hobbies for each other, and laugh merrily, make fun of themselves right there, everyone forgave each other with generously loving hearts!
The proud, freedom-loving beauty Yulia never encroached on the secrets of the inner world of her “palladin” - the “priceless Brishka”, knowing that, sometimes, behind the apparent calm and silence in his soul, a deep abyss lurks!
And only She, the incomparable Julia, was his true Guardian Angel, although there was never anything heavenly-airy in her, she was only a beautiful, earthly woman - sinful, hot-tempered, with a craving for truly earthly passions and earthly happiness. She was, in fact, real, blinding, burning, filling everything around with brightness and heat, “the Italian afternoon, the sun,” as Bryullov called her, and in the shadow of the Beloved’s increasingly frequent attacks of nervous melancholy, which was facilitated by the most difficult circumstances of the artist’s life: the death of her parents, brother Pavel, and most importantly - the great and hidden from prying eyes tragedy of Bryullov’s own failed marriage with the outstanding pianist, student of Frederic Chopin, Emilia Timm - she became colder and colder. She knew the bitter story of her Artist’s marriage, but she also told few people about it. I was afraid to tear both my own and someone else’s hearts with an overly painful story.
The gap between the spouses was sudden and seemed inexplicable, because no one in St. Petersburg understood anything. And when people don’t know anything, then their imagination knows no limits.
For many years, historians did not reveal the secret of this strange gap, explaining their silence for reasons of morality. But at the same time, leaving the reader in the dark, historians - unwittingly! - Bryullov was not exonerated of guilt; thus, the reader had the right to think the worst about the painter. But from now on, the seal of silence has been broken, and we are allowed to tell the real truth.
Emilia Timm was corrupted by her own father, who, passing her off as Bryullov, wanted to remain as his daughter’s lover.
Moreover, when the breakup had already taken place, this scoundrel (by the way, along with his daughter) demanded a “lifelong pension” from the artist. Bryullov suffered.
By that time, Karl was forty, Julia thirty-six.
Countess Yulia Samoilova urgently rushed to St. Petersburg on inheritance matters.
Immediately notified of the slander being erected against her friend, Yulia Pavlovna is a continuous impulse, as in her portraits! - rushed to his workshop. She found him dejected by troubles. He was unhappy, but... already with a brush in his hand.
- My wife is an artist! - admitted Bryullov.
Julia turned everything upside down in his apartment. She kicked out the cook hired by Emilia Timm; she gave sharp slaps to a drunken footman; she ordered to drive away all the guests who were eager to get a hangover, and, probably, she could tell Bryullov the very words that she once sent him with a letter:
“I entrust myself to your friendship, which is more than precious to me, and I repeat to you that no one in the world admires you and loves you as much as I, your faithful friend.”
Only a loving woman can write and speak like that...
Karl Pavlovich began to paint a portrait of his beloved woman, but now in a completely different manner, depicting her again in a fit of movement that no one predicted - almost sharp, almost defiant, almost protesting.
This is how the famous “Countess Yu. P. Samoilova leaving the ball of the Persian envoy” arose. Between Samoilova and the society she was leaving, Bryullov lowered a heavy, brightly burning curtain barrier, as if cutting off her path to return to society. She tore off the mask, appearing before us in all the revelation of her beauty, and behind the curtain of the curtain - as if in fog - the vague outlines of masquerade figures swayed.
Karl Bryullov.
Portrait of Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova leaving the ball with her adopted daughter Amatzilia Paccini
(State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg, Russia.)
But in these times, in his works, loneliness, the bitterness of detachment from worldly vanity will be visible more and more clearly, more sharply, more definitely. The bitterness of a difficult insight. (“Portrait of Strugovshchikov”, “Self-Portrait”.) Many people sympathized with the most talented master who glorified Russia with his canvases all over the world, a professor at the Academy of Arts, who had hundreds of students and admirers, but he could only cry the inconsolable tears of a child on the lap of Countess Julia. She understood and consoled everything, but still, she was endlessly chilled in the depths of his huge, sad, detached eyes. Or did she think she was cold?...
They, abandoning everything in Russia: orders, the Academy, classes, neglecting the Highest discontent, used to go to Italy for a couple of months, Bryullov there wrote his sketches for large paintings, genre scenes from Neapolitan life, portraits commissioned from him by the Italian and Russian nobility. There was no end to rich clients, and Julia would never have allowed her “dear friend” to feel the need for anything, but he often wearily dropped: “I will never get married, my wife is an artist!” And he was again drawn to Russia. At first she pretended to blithely not hear.
But one day, in 1845, she made a painful decision for herself. She told Bryullov that she was leaving, that she loved someone else, and - for a long time! He didn't object to anything. He nodded in agreement. But when at Issakievsky Preshpek, in St. Petersburg, their sleighs were finally leaving in different directions, he quietly said: “You are leaving my life... So it’s time for me to leave too!” She did not hear these words in the creaking of the sledge runners, or again pretended that she did not hear.. The winter sun treacherously blinded her eyes, tears flowed, she swallowed them, smiling.. But she still tried to be the victorious July, Italian sun. What she has always been for “Brishka’s priceless friend”! After all, he was looking after her. She felt this without turning around! She wanted to be not a broken dove, but a proud Sun, sparkling from behind the clouds...
The portrait “Leaving the Ball” ended up with Julia in Milan much later, after Bryullov’s death in 1852. The countess outlived her Charles by twenty-three years. Samoilova, undoubtedly, was captivated by the creations of the “dear and mourned Brishka,” as she called him. She considered the one “whom she loved and admired so much... one of the greatest geniuses that ever existed.” This is her verdict.
She died in Paris on March 14, 1875. She was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. During the years of need and ruin, Yulia Pavlovna categorically refused to sell her paintings by K. Bryullov. For the time being, all the portraits remained in her house in Italy. But gradually they dispersed throughout the world. Their fate was decided by the descendants of the countess - distant relatives who still live in Italy, in the family villa Palen - Litta, Campo, near Rome. Probably, some of them are in private Western collections, and the main and best one - "Departing from the Ball..." - is now in the Russian Museum.
Materials used:
The story of V. Pikul "Retiring from the Ball"
Article by S. Makarenko "Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova"
Website http://www.tanais.info/
In an atmosphere of poverty close to poverty, a childless and capricious old woman was dying in Paris, living only in memories of what had happened and what would die with her. Neither the Milanese nor the St. Petersburg relatives seemed to care about the lonely woman who had once flashed across the Russian horizon “like a lawless comet in the circle of calculated luminaries.”
In 1875, she was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, consigned to oblivion. But “Countess Y.P. Samoilova, leaving the ball...,” was remembered by art connoisseurs, and she was resurrected again and again in the days of sparkling youth, remaining immortal on the canvases of Karl Bryullov. It seemed that she had not died, but had only retired from the magnificent “masquerade of life” in order to return to us more than once from the mysterious darkness of the past. A.N. Benois, a subtle connoisseur of painting, wrote that the master’s relationship with Samoilova is quite well known, and “probably thanks to his special attitude towards the person depicted, he managed to express so much fire and passion that when looking at them, all the satanic charm of his model immediately becomes clear.” ..."
K. Bryullov. Portrait of Countess Samoilova leaving the ball of the Persian envoy (with her adopted daughter Amatsilia). Russian Museum, 1842.
I feel that a pedigree certificate should be given so that neither I nor the reader wanders into the wilds of history. Let's start with Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky. His own niece Ekaterina Vasilievna Engelhardt, without any love, but only out of boredom, became the wife of Catherine’s diplomat Count Pavel Skavronsky. When this aristocrat finally “rotted” among the beauties of Italy, his widow - this time for passionate love! - married the admiral of the Russian fleet, the Maltese cavalier and Count Julius Pompeevich Litta. From her first marriage, Ekaterina Vasilievna had two daughters: Ekaterina became the wife of the famous commander Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration, and her sister Maria married Count P.P. von der Palen.
From his marriage to Maria Skavronskaya, Pavel Petrovich Palen left one daughter, Yulia Pavlovna, born in 1803.
Contemporaries were amazed by her dazzling “Italian” appearance, and the black curls in Julia’s hair did not harmonize with the pale skies of the north. However, a vague legend has survived that her grandmother, who lived in Italy, was not very faithful to her husband - hence the ardor of Julia’s nature, her southern features...
It was she who bestowed friendship and love on the artist, who preserved her beauty in his portraits. Having written this phrase, I involuntarily thought: is it possible to respond to the feelings of a woman who is either approaching or moving away from you?
Probably possible. Karl Pavlovich Bryullov proved it!
It is strange that this rich beauty spent too much time as a bride and only in 1825 found herself a husband. This was the capital’s “Alkibiades,” as Count Nikolai Aleksandrovich Samoilov, the great-nephew of the same Potemkin-Tavrichesky, was called.
Nikolai Samoilov. Artist B.Sh. Mituar, 1825
She did not experience happiness in her marriage, for “Alcibiades,” being a model of physical development, was also an exemplary reveler. The manager of his estates was a certain Shurka Mishkovsky, a nosy clerk who became the count’s confidant in his affairs and debauchery, and at the same time the secret comforter of the young countess. The magazine "Byloye" for 1918 published those passages from the memoirs of A. M. Turgenev that could not be published before the revolution for censorship reasons.
A. M. Turgenev, who knew a lot, wrote that Mishkovsky, for his efforts to please both spouses, received letters of loan from Samoilova for 800,000 rubles. Having learned about this, Admiral Litta hit him with a club:
If you, louse, do not return the countess's bill, I promise you a free trip to the mines of Siberia...
At the end of 1826, rumors arose about the reconciliation of the spouses; in a letter dated December 1, the poet Pushkin even congratulated Count Samoilov on returning to the arms of his wife. But soon a final break followed - after Ernest Barant, the son of the French ambassador (the same Barant with whom Mikhail Lermontov later fought a duel), became interested in Julia, the Samoilov couple separated, and the young woman settled in Slavyanka near St. Petersburg, which she inherited from the Counts Skavronsky. Wealth and noble origin gave Samoilova a feeling of complete independence, free from the constraining conditions of the world. Sometimes it seems that she even deliberately shocked the capital's high society with her defiant behavior.
B.Sh. Mituar. Portrait of Yu.P. Samoilova. 1825
The Decembrist uprising was a recent event, and Nicholas I closely supervised a series of nightly meetings in Slavyanka (behind Pavlovsky, now the Antropshino dacha station), where not only those in love with the countess gathered, but also people with a suspicious reputation. In order to destroy this nest of freethinking in one fell swoop, the emperor once sharply declared to Samoilova:
Countess, I would like to buy Slavyanka from you.
If kings ask, then they command.
Your Majesty,” answered Yulia Pavlovna, “my guests did not go to Slavyanka, but only to see me, and no matter where I appear, they will not stop coming to me.
-You are too impudent! - Caesar remarked.
- But my insolence does not exceed the measure that is appropriate in a private conversation between two relatives...
With such an answer (even more daring!), Julia made it clear to the tsar that the blood of the Skavronskys flows in her veins, which since the time of Catherine I has pulsated in every member of the family of the ruling Romanov dynasty. To spite the emperor, wanting to prove that they did not go to Slavyanka for the sake of Slavyanka itself, Yulia Pavlovna began to go for walks to the “spit” of Elagin Island, and behind her, as if in tow, a motorcade of all sorts of carriages and droshies, in which the fans of the countess were sitting, stretched for a mile , happy even if she smiles at them.
Watercolor by K. Bryullov
Among those hopelessly in love with Samoilova was Emmanuel Saint-Prix, a hussar cornet, a famous cartoonist in St. Petersburg (he was mentioned by Pushkin in the novel “Eugene Onegin” and in the poem “Happy are you in lovely fools.”) But the young rake was not happy - he shot himself! The poet Vyazemsky wrote in those days: “In the morning they found his corpse on the floor, floating in blood. His faithful dog licked the wound.” The cause of the hussar’s suicide was considered to be an unrequited feeling, again caused in him by Samoilova. From the outside it might seem that Yulia Pavlovna is capable of bringing only suffering and misfortune to men, but for Karl Bryullov she became his savior...
This happened in 1828, when Vesuvius threatened Naples with a new eruption of boiling lava. The year was difficult for Bryullov, tormented by the tragic love of a certain Adelaide Demoulin for him: jealous to the point of madness, she rushed into the waters of the Roman Tiber, and Bryullov’s friends cruelly accused him of indifference.
“I didn’t love her,” Karl Pavlovich justified himself, “and I read her last letter only after learning about her death...
In the house of Prince Grigory Ivanovich Gagarin, ambassador to the Tuscan court, dinner was already ending when, stunning the guests, suddenly a tall, stately woman suddenly appeared, the very embodiment of that special beauty that one would like to see constantly - this is how Bryullov first met Countess Yulia Samoilova, and the owner of the house warned the artist in a friendly manner:
Fear her, Karl! This woman is not like the others. She changes not only her loyalties, but also the palaces in which she lives. Having no children of her own, she declares strangers to be her own. But I agree, and you will agree, that she can drive you crazy...
Karl Bryullov. Self-portrait
The suicide of the cornet Saint-Prix did not affect Samoilova in any way, but the death of the unfortunate Demoulin plunged Bryullov into despair. Prince Gagarin, in order to protect the artist from the blues and gossip, took him to the Grotta-Ferrata estate, where Bryullov healed his grief by reading and working. But even into this quiet rural life, like a rebellious whirlwind, Yulia Samoilova once burst into life.
Let's go! - she declared decisively. - Maybe the roar of Vesuvius, ready to bury this unbearable world, will save you from melancholy and remorse... Let's go to Naples!
On the way, Bryullov admitted that he was scared.
Are you afraid of dying under the ashes of Vesuvius?
- No. Raphael lived thirty-seven years, and I am already entering my third decade and have not yet accomplished anything great.
“Then do it,” Julia laughed...
Who is he and who is she? Is it fitting for him, a toiler from a family of toilers, to gaze at her beauty? Petersburg refused to even send Karl pension money, and next to him appeared a woman who knew no limits to passions and expenses, who sometimes visited France, where she had the Grousset estate, overflowing with family treasures. Finally, how beautiful is her palazzo in Milan, and even better is the villa on Lake Como, where she was visited by the composers Rossini and Donizetti... Samoilova was smart and, it seems, she herself guessed what was oppressing the poor painter.
So be it, I agree to be humiliated by you.
- You? - Bryullov was surprised.
- Certainly! If I consider myself an equal to the emperor, then why don’t you, my dear Brishka, make me your slave, forever conquered by your talent? After all, talent is also a title that elevates the artist not only above the aristocracy, but even above the power of crowned despots...
Bryullov painted portraits of her, considering them unfinished, because Yulia Pavlovna did not like to pose - there was no time! She always had no time. On one of the canvases she is represented returning from a walk, she impulsively runs into the room - under the admiring gaze of the girl and the blackamoor servant.
K. Bryullov. Portrait of Yu.P. Samoilova with Giovanina Pacini and the little black arap. 1832-1834. Hillwood Museum, USA
Run, run...
“I have no time, I’m used to rushing,” she said.
Finally, “The Last Day of Pompeii” broke out, and it glorified the painter immediately and for centuries! Bryullov became the idol of Italy: they followed him like a champion who had lifted an unprecedented weight, masters invited him to visit, were eager to know his opinion, highly valued every stroke of Bryullov’s pencil, and finally, Karl Pavlovich was pestered with orders.
K. Bryullov. Last day of Pompeii. 1833.
“Bryullov simply infuriates me,” Princess Dolgorukaya, who had long begged the artist for a date, wrote angrily. - I asked him to come to me, I knocked on his workshop, but he didn’t show up. Yesterday I thought to find him at Prince Gagarin’s, but he didn’t come... This is an original, for which there are no arguments of reason! Bryullov did not know how to be rational and did not want to. Marchesa Visconti, a very noble lady to whom he promised a drawing, also could not get the maestro to come to her. Or rather, he came to her, but each time he remained in the hallway of the palace, held there by the beauty of the snotty girl of the doorman's daughter. It was in vain that the marquise and her guests languished with impatience: Bryullov, having admired the girl’s beauty, went home, yawning sleepily. Finally, Marquise Visconti herself went down to the Swiss.
K. Bryullov. Last day of Pompeii. 1833. Fragment of a painting
Ugly girl! If your company is more valuable to Bryullov than the company of my titled friends, then tell him that you want to have his drawing, and... give it to me!
It turned out to be a funny anecdote: the drawing for the marquise was made by order of the daughter of the doorman of the same marquise. If secular rumor accused Samoilova of frivolity, then Bryullov, who glorified her in his paintings, was also fickle.
But at the same time: “A faithful friend,” Julia passionately said to the artist. “My faithful friend,” Bryullov spoke tenderly of her... Much later, when a painful dispute arose about the purity of their relationship, Countess Yulia Pavlovna answered in irritation:
Ax, leave it! Understand that between me and the great Karl, nothing was done according to your rules... Rules could exist for everyone, but not for me and not for Karl!
Connoisseurs of Bryullov’s work, who had penetrated into the secret of their relationship, closely studied the giant canvas “The Last Day of Pompeii,” looking for the face of the main character among the dead:
Here he is, saving the attributes of sacred art..., next to him is she! With a jug on his head, and horror frozen in his eyes. The goddess of his heart is easy to recognize in the fallen woman, already defeated by the vibrations of the earth. And here comes Samoilova again, attracting her daughters to her - a mother’s gesture full of despair...
The famous “Madonna Litta” by Leonardo da Vinci (now adorning the Hermitage) was inherited by Countess Samoilova from Admiral Julius Pompeevich Litta, who idolized his “granddaughter” as his own daughter. He literally brought down his colossal inheritance in Italy and Russia, making Julia excessively wasteful; Constantly surrounded by composers, actors and artists, this woman, very kind at heart, tried to help everyone. If in her homeland she considered herself an equal to the emperor, then under the sun of Italy she also did not find herself a stranger, for the Counts of Litta, who once owned the city of Milan, were famous in the history of Italy.
Watercolor by D. Bossi
Yulia Pavlovna could have said to Bryullov:
Isn't it strange? Among the ancestors of my “grandfather” there were those at whose court the great Leonardo da Vinci worked, and now I, the heir of their descendants, have you at my feet... my glorious, my precious friend Brishka!
Ivan Bocharov, our talented art historian, who did so much to reveal the secrets of Bryullov’s creativity in Italy, even found collateral descendants in Milan - relatives of Countess Samoilova, but the revelation of some mysteries immediately gave rise to other mysteries - both love and creativity. Probably, it is now easier for us to find out where and on whom Yulia Pavlovna squandered her inheritance from Admiral Litta and the Skavronsky counts than to find out where the lost masterpieces by Bryullov went, which he so generously presented to his brilliant friend...
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov has always been “Precious Brishka” for her, but for us he will remain national pride!
Pushkin also dreamed of having a drawing of his hand...
Bryullov’s return to his homeland was triumphant, and Pushkin wanted to order him a portrait of the captivating Natalie, confident that his wife’s beauty would inspire the brilliant maestro.
K. Bryullov. Rider. Portrait of the adopted daughters of Countess Yu.P. Samoilova - Giovanina and Amazilia Pacini. 1832. At first it was assumed that the painting depicted the Countess herself, but art historians proved that this was not the case by comparing the painting with Bryullov’s later works.
In one of the letters, the poet described to his wife his visit to Perovsky, who showed him Bryullov’s unfinished sketches for a painting on the theme of the capture of Rome by Genseric. Perovsky peppered his admiration with abuse, for he had quarreled with Bryullov:
Notice how beautifully this scoundrel drew the horseman, such a scoundrel! How did he, this pig, manage to express his canalistic, brilliant idea, he is a bastard, a beast! As he drew this whole group, he is a drunkard, a swindler and a scoundrel...
A lot has been written about how Bryullov worked in his homeland.
Everything worked out for him. The genius's fame grew, but so did his dissatisfaction with the chaotic life he was forced to live surrounded by drinking buddies. Bryullov wanted sober peace and family comfort. In the house of the battle master Sauerweid, a favorite of the court of Nicholas I, he accidentally met a quiet and modest girl - Emilia Federovna Timm, the daughter of the Riga burgomaster. In the very prime of her naive youth, tender as a spring lily of the valley, she seemed to the tired master to be the only one who, perhaps, would remove from her heart the long-standing passion for the overly ardent, overly changeable, eternally dissatisfied Julia. Karl Pavlovich always fell under the strong influence of music, and here... Here the graceful Emilia Timm captivated him by playing the piano and her singing, and her venerable father skillfully played along with his daughter on the violin.
K. Bryullov. Emilia at the piano.
No, Bryullov did not throw himself on his knees before the angelic creature, did not swear eternal love; first of all, he was an artist, and therefore expressed his delight in creating a portrait of the beautiful Emilia; it is now kept in the Tretyakov Gallery, where it is considered a masterpiece of genius. It would seem that everything is already clear...
But soon Bryullov had to write a shameful explanation to the chief of gendarmes, Benkendorf. “I fell in love passionately,” the artist admitted. “The bride’s parents, especially the father, immediately made a plan to marry me to her... The girl played the role of a lover so skillfully that I did not suspect deception...”
The wedding took place on January 27, 1839. Taras Shevchenko, who witnessed this, recalled that Bryullov was in a gloomy mood on the wedding day, as if he had foreseen future trouble in advance:
“During the ceremony, Karl Pavlovich stood, deep in thought; he never looked at his beautiful bride.”
Then family life began, quite respectable: young Emilia blushed from immodest jokes, played cards with her husband’s students, paying them for losses not with the dimes they so needed, but with a performance of cavatina from the opera Norma, and it seemed that Bryullov quite happy with the choice of my heart.
But... Here it is, this ominous damned “but”!
On March 8, a month after the wedding, Emilia left Bryullov’s house, and the dirtiest gossip spread throughout the capital:
Have you heard? Our great Karl turned out to be a sadist, the poor thing could not stand the torment and ran away from him in only her shirt.
- But I, gentlemen, heard otherwise! Bryullov quarreled with his wife's father over cards and smashed his head with a bottle... to pieces!
- It's not true! Being drunk, he tore the earrings and lobes out of Emilia's ears and kicked the unfortunate woman out into the street barefoot...
The fact that Emilia fled from Bryullov is true! But it is also true that Bryullov himself fled from his own house; hiding from shame, he found refuge in the family of the sculptor Klodt. The gap between the spouses was sudden and seemed inexplicable, because no one in St. Petersburg understood anything. And when people don’t know anything, then their imagination knows no limits. For many years, historians did not reveal the secret of this strange gap, explaining their silence for reasons of morality. But at the same time, leaving the reader in the dark, historians - unwittingly! - Bryullov was not exonerated of guilt; thus, the reader had the right to think the worst about the painter. But from now on, the seal of silence has been broken, and we are allowed to tell the real truth. Emilia Timm was corrupted by her own father, who, passing her off as Bryullov, wanted to remain as his daughter’s lover.
Moreover, when the break had already taken place, this scoundrel (by the way, along with his daughter) demanded a “lifelong pension” from the artist. Bryullov suffered.
How will I show myself on the street? - he said to Klodt’s wife. “They’ll point fingers at me as if I’m a villain.” Who will believe in my innocence? And this “magical creature” still dares to demand a pension from me... For what?
Things have gone far. So far that Emperor Nicholas I ordered Bryullov to explain to Count Benckendorff the exact reasons for his divorce. Karl Pavlovich, raping himself, was forced to allow strangers into the dirt in which he was shamefully soiled. As they say, there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped. Just at this time, Count Litta passed away, who, despite his seventy years, considered himself still an eligible bachelor, read without glasses, and drank wine like a hussar at a bivouac. A minute before his death, he greedily devoured a huge form of ice cream (designed for 12 servings), and the admiral dedicated his last words in this sinful world to the art of his cook:
This time the ice cream was simply amazing!..
But in the death of Count Litta, salvation came to Bryullov.
Countess Yulia Samoilova urgently rushed to St. Petersburg on inheritance matters; In Tsarskoe Selo, she briefly cried over the gravestone of Litta’s “grandfather” and hurried to appear in the capital’s society, where she was recognized with great difficulty. “She has changed so much,” reported K. Ya. Bulgakov, “that I would not have recognized her if I met her on the street: she lost weight and her face became Italian. In conversation she has Italian liveliness and is pleasant herself...”
Immediately notified of the slander being erected against her friend, Yulia Pavlovna is a continuous impulse, as in her portraits! - rushed to his workshop. She found him dejected by troubles.
He was unhappy, but... already with a brush in his hand.
My wife is an artist! - admitted Bryullov.
Julia turned everything upside down in his apartment. She kicked out the cook hired by Emilia Timm; she gave sharp slaps to a drunken footman; she ordered to drive away all the guests who were eager to have a hangover, and, probably, she could tell Bryullov the very words that she once sent him with a letter: “I entrust myself to your friendship, which is more than precious to me, and I repeat to you that no one the world does not admire you and does not love you as much as I, your faithful friend.”
Only a loving woman can write and speak like that...
Having consoled Bryullov, she returned to Slavyanka; here, in the interior of the main hall, she was depicted by the artist Pyotr Basin, a friend of Bryullov, who knew Samoilova from his life in Italy. Basin painted the portrait of a woman in a restrained manner, the countess seemed frozen in thought; the portrait seems to be just a formal report on the countess’s appearance, nothing more.
Karl Pavlovich also began a portrait of his beloved woman, but in a completely different manner, depicting her again in a fit of movement that no one predicted, almost sharp, almost defiant, almost protesting.
This is how the famous “Countess Yu.P.” arose. Samoilova leaving the Persian envoy’s ball.” Between Samoilova and the society she was leaving, Bryullov lowered a heavy, brightly burning curtain barrier, as if cutting off her path to return to society. She tore off the mask, appearing before us in all the revelation of her beauty, and behind the curtain of the curtain - as if in fog - the vague outlines of masquerade figures swayed.
Samoilova is removed again. Really... forever?
The curtain is like a flame in which the whole past burns, and she will never return back. The St. Petersburg Vedomosti soon informed the reader that Countess Samoilova had left the capital, going to Europe... forever!
Leaving her homeland in 1840, she sold Slavyanka to the rich man Vorontsov-Dashkov, which the emperor soon bought from him, calling this estate in his own way - Tsarskaya Slavyanka. Nine years later, Bryullov, already terminally ill, also left Russia, hoping that the fertile climate of Madeira would heal him, but he soon returned to Italy; one can guess that on the eve of his death he still saw Yulia Pavlovna, but... What could he say to her, who remained alive, and what could she answer to him, leaving this complex and luxurious world?
The truth must be told to the end. An avid music lover, Samoilova often went to the opera, and once, after listening to Perry’s tenor singing, she left the theater in the same carriage with the singer, telling him on the way home to get ready...
Why? - the tenor was stunned.
- I decided to make you my husband...
In old literature, for some reason, this singer is sometimes called “doctor.” There is reason to suspect that Perry was carried away not by love, but only by mercantile considerations: he dreamed of outliving Samoilova in order to take possession of the untold riches of the Russian aristocrat. However, this young man - in the prime of his strength and talent - could not withstand the intensity of her passions and soon died, leaving Samoilova a forty-three-year-old widow. And a year after his death, Yulia Pavlovna’s first husband, the famous “Alcibiades,” also died in Russia, which is why she mourned for two husbands at once for a long time. Eyewitnesses who saw her during this period of her life said that widow’s mourning suited her very well, emphasizing her beauty, but she used it in a very original way. Samoilova sat the children on the long train of the mourning dress, as if on a cart, and she, like a healthy horse, rolled the children laughing with delight along the mirrored parquet floors of her palaces.
Then she retired to Paris, where she slowly but surely lavished her heroic health and her fabulous wealth on the composers, writers and artists around her. Only on the threshold of old age did she enter into another marriage with the French diplomat Count Charles de Mornay, who was 64 years old, but after the first night she separated from him and ended her days under her previous name - Samoilova.
It is very difficult to write about this woman, because she spent forty years of her life outside her homeland, and therefore Russian memoirists did not indulge her with their attention. If it weren’t for her closeness to Bryullov, we probably would have forgotten about her too...
But even if we forget about her, we cannot forget her portraits.
Here she is again leaving the ball. And will never return...
Self-portrait of Karl Bryullov
A woman-muse, a woman-love, a woman-friend, and a woman who finally broke the artist’s heart. She smashed him so hard that he died. And this is all about her - about Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova.
Before I talk about how we met, how we fell in love and how we parted, I will tell you about how this extraordinary woman lived before she met her.
Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova
Countess Yu.P. Samoilova. Fragment of the picture
Contemporaries noted that Countess Samoilova was a brilliant and daring lady, well versed in literature and music, and was educated and freedom-loving. She lived not with her mind, but with her passionate heart. And my heart was very restless.
Envious tongues hinted that all her independence and audacity came from the countless riches that her ancestors, both on her mother’s side and on her father’s side, left her. Indeed, the nee Countess von der Palen was fabulously rich. The heiress of Russian and Italian aristocrats: the Skavronskys (Catherine the First - the wife of Great Peter), Palena, Litta and Visconti (these are the same ones who were relatives of Francesco Sforza, the patron of Leonardo la Vinci).
They also said that Count Litta, chief chamberlain and chief master of ceremonies of the imperial court, left his enormous fortune to Julia because she was not his granddaughter, but his daughter. When the girl was five years old, her mother went to Paris to study art, and left the girl in the care of the count.
The little countess grew up impudent and headstrong, and was distinguished by phenomenal rebellion. But, if she loved someone, then with this person she turned into a little angel. Governesses and nannies simply adored the small and graceful girl, who looked like a beautiful kitten.
Yulenka loved to wander through the endless halls of the count's palace. With her fragile fingers she touched priceless works of art. And very early I began to understand what real art was. And if I didn’t understand something, I went to the huge library. And great minds, from the pages of books, talked to her about life and art.
This is how the future Countess Samoilova was formed, an independent, educated woman, with her own outlook on life and her own personal opinion.
RiderShe never followed fashion. For what? She herself was a fashionista and a role model. A beauty with a proud posture, smart and relaxed. How did she conquer men's hearts?! And how carried away I was!
When she turned 25 (this happened in 1825), she suddenly got married. Her chosen one is not an ordinary person at all. He is rich, famous, handsome and young, witty and cheerful, a friend of Pushkin and a regular at social events - the Emperor's adjutant, Colonel Samoilov Nikolai Alexandrovich.
But the happiness of the young people did not last long. Nikolai was known as an avid duelist and gambler, loved wine and noisy companies. And he never loved his wife Julia. This marriage was arranged by Nikolai's mother, who simply dreamed of marrying her son to a bride like the young Countess Palen. Colonel Samoilov loved a completely different woman. He loved passionately and tenderly.
The divorce was quick and quiet. In 1827, the “handsome Apkiviad” (that was Samoilov’s name in society) took the countess to her father and returned the dowry (or rather, what was left of it) to his ex-wife. They stopped being spouses, but remained friends. Society did not understand such relationships: the world lived on rumors and generated rumors. They were reconciled and quarreled, married again and divorced. And they were just friends. In the end, Count Samoilov left for the active army. Colleagues, then, spoke of his cold courage and contempt for death.
And Countess Samoilova? She is free and her audacity simply has no boundaries. The light of St. Petersburg strives not to Tsarskoe Selo, but to Grafskaya Slavyanka - the summer estate of the young Countess Samoilova. The Emperor is furious. He cannot get guests to visit him - they prefer to visit the countess. And the Emperor asks to sell him a popular estate. He asks in such a way that even the wayward Samoilova does not dare refuse.
But, finally, she turns to the imperial dignitary:
- Tell the emperor that you didn’t go to Grafskaya Slavyanka, but to Countess Samoilova, and they will continue to go to her, no matter where she is!
The impudent countess not only said, but also did... Very little time passed and the light of St. Petersburg began to gather not in Grafskaya Slavyanka, but in the beautiful palace on Elagin Island. Needless to say, the owner of the palace was the magnificent Samoilova.
She was a star of secular society not only in Russia, but also in Italy. Aristocrats and diplomats, poets and composers, artists and writers gathered in her Italian palace. Rossini, Verdi, Bellini and Pacini. They are regulars at the original Countess Samoilova's.
Wine and money flow like a river, passions rage and little love tragedies happen. The novels have no end and count. But she only brings suffering to men and suffers herself. She lives brightly and passionately, but there is no happiness in her life.
Bryullov and Samoilova. First meeting
The year was 1828. Naples looked with fear at the awakened Vesuvius... The year was difficult for Karl Bryullov. Adelaide Desmoulins fell passionately in love with him. She loved, but he was cold. She was jealous and, out of stupid jealousy, threw herself into the Tiber. The world accused Bryullov of cruel indifference. He made excuses, but no one believed him.
Bryullov was invited to dinner with Prince Gagarin. And when the dinner was coming to an end, the doors of the hall suddenly opened and she appeared on the threshold... A proud, stately beauty, a dream and the very embodiment of beauty. The audience gasped, and the prince warned Bryullov:
Fear her, Karl! This woman is not like the others. She changes not only her loyalties, but also the palaces in which she lives. Having no children of her own, she declares strangers to be her own. But I agree, and you will agree, that she can drive you crazy...
They exchanged just a few words. And then Prince Gagarin, trying to protect Bryullov from gossip and remorse, took the artist to his estate with the beautiful name Grotta-Ferrata. Karl painted pictures and read a lot. Life flowed quietly and serenely. But, one evening, this rural silence simply exploded - Yulia Pavlovna appeared on the threshold of the house.
Let's go! - she declared decisively. - Maybe the roar of Vesuvius, ready to bury this unbearable world, will save you from melancholy and remorse... Let's go to Naples!
Then, many years later, she recalled that “this” happened at the very first moment of their meeting. Nothing had happened yet, but she already knew that she was “bewitched” to him forever.
He is a poor artist, and she is a socialite who knows no account of her treasures, the owner of beautiful palaces in Italy and Russia, a patron of the arts, an aristocrat of the highest standard.
She's smart and bossy, but she loves him.
- So be it, I agree to be humiliated by you.
- You? - Bryullov was surprised.
- Certainly! If I consider myself an equal to the emperor, then why don’t you, my dear Brishka (that’s what she called him), make me your slave, forever conquered by your talent? After all, talent is also a title that elevates the artist not only above the aristocracy, but even above the power of crowned despots...
He painted portraits from her. And he always said that these portraits are not finished. Yulia Pavlovna did not like to pose - she was always in a hurry. Well, she couldn't sit still for long. Impetuous, passionate, cheerful, full of life. She loved him and loved his work. But she didn’t like to pose.
Portraits of Samoilova, painted by Bryullov, delighted the public. Karl began to be compared with great artists: Van Dyck and Rubens. And then the inevitable happened - “The Last Day of Pompeii” struck. The painting amazed the admiring audience and glorified the artist. Immediately and forever!
Last day of Pompeii
Orders rained down on him like from a cornucopia, the aristocrats considered it an honor to have “the great Bryullov” as a guest, and any of his work became priceless. He was simply pestered with orders and declarations of love.
Princess Dolgorukaya wrote that Karl Bryullov simply infuriates her... She begs him for a date, tries to sneak into his workshop, knocks on his door, tries to catch him at Prince Gagarin's. And he... slips away. Cruel and reckless.
Marquise Visconti, a lady not only noble, but also very influential, is offended by him. She calls the guests, and she is waiting for Bryullov. He comes. But he remains in the hallway of her palace - he is struck by the beauty of the doorman’s daughter. Karl admired the beauty of the girl and... left. The Marquise is furious.
His desired woman is Samoilova. He is ready to draw it always and everywhere. In the famous painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” his beloved is depicted three times (or even four times?).
The last day of Pompeii, fragment The last day of Pompeii, fragment
After the Countess took Charles to Naples, they did not part for a long time. They were captured by a great and passionate feeling.
She wrote to him:
- My friend, Brishka! I love you more than I can explain, I hug you and will be spiritually committed to you until the grave. I love you, I adore you, I am devoted to you, and I recommend myself to your friendship. For me, she is the most precious thing in the world.
She passionately wanted to unite her fate with the fate of Karl Bryullov. And he loved her. What stopped them? She was his one true love. Love for life. But, strange love.
The world constantly gossiped about the novels of the flighty Samoilova. But Karl was not faithful to her either. They were together, but somehow everything worked out so that their love allowed love pranks on the side. It was as if they were testing their feelings to the limit.
They confided their secrets to each other (including the secrets of love affairs), avoided “vulgar jealousy,” and protected personal freedom. Perhaps many years later, each of them realized that love is more than personal unlimited freedom. And love and frivolity do not coexist under the same roof.
Portrait of Countess Yu. P. Samoilova with her pupil Giovanina Pacini and a small black boyShe is the “Italian sun” (as the artist called Julia) - bright, blinding, flooding everything around with light and passion, energetic and restless. And he is calm and even melancholic. Her passions and feelings boil and incinerate everything and everyone around her. He has everything inside. And his soul burns. He was extremely tired.
One day, while in the house of the artist Sauerweid, he met, quite by accident, the daughter of the Riga burgomaster Emilia Tim. She is so young and tender, like the first spring flower, modest and quiet. And how different she is from the ever-changeable, restless and passionate Julia. Maybe she will be the one who can heal his soul from this fatal passion for Julia?
Emilia played the piano for him and sang. And he dreamed of a quiet and peaceful family life. The young creature blushed furiously at indiscreet jokes and embodied innocence itself.
A fragment of the work, as stated by art critics, by Karl Bryullova “Portrait of a Young Woman at the Piano” (Emilia Timm). The work from a private collection was exhibited in 2013 at the Russian Museum at an exhibition of the artist’s works.
He painted her portrait, and he almost believed in happiness. The wedding took place in 1839. Subsequently, Taras Shevchenko (he was at that wedding) recalled that Bryullov was gloomy and unhappy, stood with his head bowed low and did not look at his bride. It seemed that Karl was repenting and suffering greatly.
And a month and a half later, ominous rumors spread throughout St. Petersburg. They said that the enraged Karl tore the earrings, along with the lobes, out of his young wife’s ears, and kicked his barefoot wife out into the street. He also had a fight with the bride’s father and hit him on the head with a bottle.
Bryullov refused to comment on the obvious fact (Emilia really left). But Bryullov himself left his home. He hid from terrible shame in the house of the sculptor Klodt.
The ex-wife and her father demanded money from the artist, rumors multiplied so much that the Emperor demanded an explanation from Bryullov. Karl was invited to Count Beckendorf to explain the reasons for the divorce. And then it turned out that his innocent and gentle Emilia was the mistress... of her father. Moreover, this relationship continued after her marriage. And she also demanded lifelong maintenance from the artist.
A great artist - he was disgraced and destroyed.
To Bryullov’s great happiness, Count Litta died in St. Petersburg at this time, and Yulia Pavlovna appeared in the northern capital. Having learned about the misfortune that befell Bryullov, she hurried to her Karl’s house. She didn't come. She burst in like a crazy comet: she drove away the cook, slapped the drunken footman in the face, and escorted all the guests who were expecting free drinks and new rumors from the reception room.
She, once again, turned his house and his life upside down.
Bryullov writes again. And paints her portraits. It was during that period that this picture appeared.
Portrait of Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova leaving the ball with her adopted daughter Amazilia Paccini (Masquerade)There is more and more coldness and loneliness in his works. He is great, he is famous and he is unhappy. He only loves her. But she lacks passion and fire. Julia blames cold Russia for this and they leave for Italy. In Italy, Karl works a lot and... yearns for St. Petersburg. It seems to him that Julia no longer loves him.
This happened in 1845. Julia suddenly decided to get married and end her relationship with Bryullov. While at the opera, she invited tenor Perry to her carriage and announced to him that she had decided to become his wife. Stupid Perry was flattered by the Countess's countless riches and agreed. He dreamed of outliving Samoilova and taking possession of her fortune. But, young and full of strength, Perry could not stand her passion and the frantic pace of life. Very soon Samoilova became a widow.
Then she left for Italy. He tried to find traces of her, but in vain. There is information that they met on the eve of his death. But their conversation did not work out. What could he tell her if he was leaving this world, and she was destined to stay.
Soon Karl Bryullov died.
And she went to Paris. And she continued to squander her wealth and health. She married a French count. And she divorced him the day after the wedding.
Her wealth has dried up. There was no health either. Deep loneliness came.
For a long time she kept portraits of her “beloved Brishka.” This is all that she has left of that great and strange love.
She outlived Karl Bryullov by 23 years.
In the biography of the relationship between Countess Yulia Samoilova and Karl Bryullov, even the very frivolous “Russian Italy” was surprised. “Rules could exist for everyone, but not for me and not for Karl,” said the countess.
They could be called an ideal couple: he embodied the dream of one of the richest women in Russia about a worthy object of admiration, she - the dream of a great artist about ideal beauty. But for some reason their meeting is persistently called fatal.
Karl Bryullov and Yulia Samoilova first saw each other in 1830 in Italy, in the famous salon of Princess Zeneida - Zinaida Volkonskaya. They were both already mature, accomplished people, and it was a meeting of two stars, although not equal. Still, Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova was an aristocrat of the highest standard. And Karl Pavlovich Bryullov is just an artist. True, one whose paintings were extremely popular in Europe, and the countess herself, being a keen art collector, called them “Bryullov’s miracles.”
Yulia Pavlovna fell in love often and easily entered into closer relationships than was allowed in that era for a woman who wanted to be known as respectable and virtuous. However, Samoilova did not care what they said about her behind her back, and she even liked the fact that her extravagance was considered outrageous.
It was also a challenge to society that the objects of her passion were exclusively people of creative professions: opera singers, actors. composers, artists, that is, ordinary people. and most often the poor. Countess Samoilova generously supported them, but the role of philanthropist did not fully satisfy her. Her soul longed for admiration and admiration for a true genius. Yulia Pavlovna considered it her destiny to throw her life and all her aristocratic pride at the feet of someone who was lower than her in origin, but much higher in talent.
In the person of Karl Bryullov she found the ideal she dreamed of. After all, he really was not just talented: he was a genius. So immersed in creativity that he perceived everything that had nothing to do with painting as an annoying hindrance, an obstacle on the way to the main thing - to the canvas and brush. He probably would not have noticed the beautiful countess if Yulia Pavlovna had not demonstrated the ideal of beauty that Bryullov created in his imagination and embodied on canvases, not hoping to see in the flesh.
Karl Bryullov - biography
Actually, this - the creation of unattainable beauty - was the goal of “art”, to which many generations of the Bryullovs devoted themselves. Karl Bryullov's great-grandfather, the Frenchman Georges Bryullo, was a sculptor. In 1773, he arrived with his two sons in St. Petersburg and entered the Imperial Porcelain Factory. His eldest son Ivan Georgievich also became a sculptor. And grandson Pavel Ivanovich is a woodcarver and graphic artist. Creative biography of the Bryullo family, renamed the Bryullovs in the Russian manner. was not interrupted. The sons of Pavel Ivanovich Bryullov and his wife, the German Maria Ivanovna Schroeder, followed in the footsteps of their ancestors: Alexander became an outstanding architect, Karl became the greatest artist of the Romantic era, and there was also Fyodor, also an artist, and quite in demand.
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov was born in St. Petersburg on December 23, 1799. As a child, he was extremely sick and weak, until the age of seven he practically did not leave his bed and, as he himself believed, it was the forced immobility and loneliness that taught him to derive pleasure from contemplating beauty: after all, he had no other entertainment except contemplation. As soon as Karl became stronger, his father began to draw with him and immediately noticed the boy’s talent, which he began to develop, sometimes using very harsh methods. Sometimes, he didn’t even allow his son to have lunch with everyone if he didn’t complete the design given to him on time and properly. But Karl entered the art academy at the age of ten, at the same time as his older brother Alexander, and was already drawing better than all his fellow students.
He studied well, his works invariably aroused admiration among his teachers. At the same time, Karl Bryullov managed to position himself in such a way that he became not an object of envy for his classmates, but a recognized leader. He helped his friends by correcting their work, and as “payment” he asked for only one thing: to be read aloud to him while he drew. This is how young Bryullov managed to comprehend all other sciences, devoting most of his time to the main thing - creativity. In 1821, upon graduation from the academy, Karl Bryullov received a 1st degree certificate and a large gold medal for the painting “The Appearance of God to Abraham in the Form of Three Angels.”
The Bryullov brothers settled in wooden workshops at the St. Isaac's Cathedral that was under construction. Karl received many private orders and made good money. But he himself was not satisfied with his successes. He dreamed of continuing his studies in Italy: this is where artists and sculptors traditionally trained. His dream came true in 1822, when the newly created Society for the Encouragement of Artists made Karl and Alexander Bryullov the first “pensioners”: they were paid for overseas travel, accommodation and ordered to make lists of paintings by famous Italian masters for a substantial fee. Copies of the classics were supposed to be sent to Russia so that they could be studied by students who did not have the opportunity to get acquainted with the originals.
The brothers traveled to Italy through Germany and France, and the journey lasted for a year: in every city where Karl and Alexander stopped, they certainly stayed to visit museums and examine architectural masterpieces. In fact, this journey itself became a continuation of their education for them. Only on May 2, 1823, the Bryullov brothers entered Rome. It was assumed that they would spend 4 years in Italy. Karl stayed here for 13 years.
Copying the works of great masters did not tire Karl Bryullov, although it took a lot of time from his own paintings. Raphael’s “School of Athens” alone took 4 years. The French writer Stendhal called this copy an excellent commentary, with the help of which the audience “completely understood the text of the old master.” “Meanwhile,” Alexander Pushkin wrote about the Italian period in his biography of Karl Bryullov, “a shaken Pompeii was already staggering in his head, idols were falling, people were running along a cramped street, wonderfully illuminated by Volcan...”
Alexander Bryullov could not stand the “museum boredom” and went to France to study architecture. then he returned to Russia and got married. “I will never get married. My wife is an artist.” - Karl wrote in 1830 in a congratulatory letter to his brother, who had recently received an order to build two luxurious houses for Countess Samoilova. One is on the Grafskaya Slavyanka estate near St. Petersburg, the other is on Elagin Island. Actually, the acquaintance of 30-year-old Karl Bryullov and, it is believed, 27-year-old Yulia Samoilova began with a conversation about the Count's Slavyanka in the salon of Zinaida Volkonskaya.
Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova - biography
Surprisingly, the exact date of birth in the biography of Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova, née Palen, is unknown. No documents have survived. And in general, very little remains of the earthly existence of this once famous beauty: several portraits, letters, the ruins of her estate and a crypt in the Parisian Père Lachaise cemetery. Having spent most of her life abroad, Yulia Pavlovna left almost no traces in the biographical memoirs of her compatriots. Today, more is known about her ancestors, among whom were the Vorontsovs. Potemkins, Engelhardts, Skavronskys, than about herself.
Thanks to the marriage of Peter the Great to Martha Skavronskaya, who became the mother of his children and remained in Russian history under the name of Catherine. Yulia Pavlovna was a relative, albeit a distant one, of the Russian emperors. She was called “the last of the Skavronskys” because it was she who became the sole heir to the gigantic fortune of her grandfather Martyn Skavronsky.
Her mother, Maria Pavlovna Skavronskaya, was first married to Count Pavel Petrovich Palen, and he was officially considered Julia's father. However, the girl’s pronounced southern beauty inspired doubt about who her father really was. Moreover, Maria Pavlovna’s stepfather was an Italian, Count Giulio Renato Litta-Visconti-Arese, known in Russia as Julius Pompeevich Litta.
It was whispered in the world that the stepfather and stepdaughter had an overly tender relationship, which resulted in the birth of a lovely baby with resin curls, velvet eyes and the face of an Italian Madonna. And they named it as if in his honor... Suspicions were strengthened even more when it turned out that Litta divided his entire considerable inheritance and unique art collections into three parts: between his two illegitimate children, whom he recognized, and Julia.
However, this event from Julia’s biography added little to the scandalous aura of the Palen family. Especially after the mother abandoned her daughter and the count and went supposedly to study singing in Paris, where she met General Adam Petrovich Ozharovsky, fell in love with him, demanded a divorce from Palen and got married a second time.
It was known that Yulia’s mother’s sister, the famous beauty Ekaterina Pavlovna Skavronskaya, being married to Bagration, cheated on him so desperately that even in Europe she became famous as a “naked angel” - because of her defiantly open dresses. And on her father’s side, there were relatives to match—Yulia’s grandfather, Pyotr Alekseevich Palen, was considered the organizer of the assassination of Emperor Paul I.
Julia Palen, a beauty, and with a fantastic dowry, for a long time could not find a suitable groom. She shone in the light, turned heads, but was in no hurry to get married. They admired her: “Beautiful, smart, charming, charmingly kind.” Alexander Pushkin dedicated his poem “Beauty” to her:
She looks around herself:
She has no rivals, no friends;
Our pale circle of beauties
In her shining, she disappears.
Wherever you hurry.
At least for a love date.
Whatever I harbor in my heart
You are a secret dream,
But, having met her, embarrassed, you
Suddenly you stop involuntarily.
Reverently
Before the shrine of beauty.
There was a rumor that the countess was in a relationship with Emperor Alexander I, a great connoisseur of female beauty. It was as if he insisted that Julia marry Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Samoilov, the emperor’s aide-de-camp, who had wooed her. He was from a well-born family and good-looking, moreover, he was rich enough so that he could not be suspected of a selfish desire to marry a rich heiress.
Their marriage was unsuccessful, and after a few months they decided to separate, and Samoilov nobly returned his wife’s dowry. Romantically minded contemporaries saw the reason for this in the fact that Samoilov allegedly loved someone else, and was forced into marriage with the beautiful Palen. More down-to-earth natures were recalled. that the young husband played and caroused, and Yulia Pavlovna was unfaithful to her husband.
They were already living separately, but then the news reached her. that in December 1825 Nikolai Alexandrovich was taken under arrest on suspicion of participation in the Decembrist conspiracy. By the highest order, he was released and all suspicions were removed from him, but in fact, Count Samoilov was a member of the Northern society, although he did not participate in the uprising. As soon as Yulia Pavlovna found out that her boring high-society husband turned out to be a rebel, she solemnly returned to him and even lived with him for several months until she was completely disappointed in him.
However, this did not in any way change her enthusiastic attitude towards the Decembrist rebels, whom she openly admired, as well as their wives who went to Siberia for their husbands, which naturally aroused the displeasure of Nicholas I. The emperor was even more irritated by the prohibitive luxury of what was built by Alexander Bryullov in 1931 her estate in Grafskaya Slavyanka and the festivities held there. They attracted more secular audiences than nearby Pavlovsk. The Emperor suggested that Samoilova sell the Count's Slavyanka to the treasury. Yulia Pavlovna refused. Rumor attributed her to her daring response to Nicholas I: “Your Majesty, my guests did not go to Slavyanka, but only to see me, and no matter where I appear, they will not stop coming to see me.”
On behalf of the emperor, she was advised not to forget about restraint in words and a sense of proportion - or else leave the country. Samoilova responded with the famous phrase that went around all of freethinking St. Petersburg: “My insolence does not exceed the measure that is appropriate in a private conversation between two relatives,” and left for Italy, which became her second homeland and where she again surrounded herself with flashy luxury and freethinkers.
Samoilova had a palace in Milan and the Villa Julia on Lake Como, she was friends with the composers Rossini and Donizetti, paid for the production of opera performances at La Scala, was a regular at the literary salon of Zinaida Volkonskaya and was interested in Catholicism, which was in vogue among enlightened Russians nobles of that period, but her main hobby was to patronize talented but poor artists, musicians, and actors.
Karl Bryullov was not so poor that Countess Samoilova had the opportunity to take care of him. Moreover, among the Russians living in Italy, he was known as an original no less than the countess. He refused to paint portraits, even when he was promised two prices for a painting, and at the same time he could, upon seeing a beauty, as once happened with Baroness Meller-Zakomelskaya, who was being painted at that moment by the famous artist Bruni, sit aside and create a portrait, delighted with which both Bruni and the Baroness cried. And leave it unfinished.
The Baroness wrote that, “realizing the impossibility of seducing him with money, she nevertheless ordered that her banker immediately pay him four thousand, and after finishing the portrait four more.” But Bryullov refused. And when the Baroness asked him to “remember that you once loved this and worked concordantly,” Bryullov answered: no amore - no picture.
“Bryullov infuriates me,” Princess Dolgorukaya wrote about him. - I asked him to come to me, I knocked on his workshop, but he didn’t show up. .. Yesterday I thought to find him at Prince Gagarin’s, but he didn’t come. In a word, I was desperate to get him. This is an original for which there are no arguments of reason.”
Countess Samoilova never asked him to come. She herself came to him in his Roman workshop when Bryulov was working on “The Last Day of Pompeii.” She had heard rumors that he had long been looking for a model for the central figure of the composition, and she was ready to give him as much time as needed for the work.
The appearance of Countess Samoilova in the workshop turned into a tragedy. One of the artist’s models, Frenchwoman Adelaide Desmoulins, committed suicide. Adelaide once worked for the artist Sylvester Shchedrin, who lived in Italy, then moved to Bryullov and fell passionately in love with him. She was so jealous of Samoilova that she literally bombarded Bryullov with letters asking for a meeting. He, carried away by Samoilova, did not read them or even print them out. And then Adelaide drowned herself in the Tiber.
Bryullov did not go to her funeral, which is why almost the entire “Russian Rome” accused him of being hard-hearted - someone passed around lists of Adelaide’s love letters to the artist. Only his closest friends - the artist Orest Kiprensky and Prince Gagarin - sympathized with Bryullov. Karl did not expect that Countess Samoilova would be among those who were not indifferent to him. Having learned about the tragedy, she immediately came for Bryullov and took him to her place in Naples, promising Karl that there, closer to Pompeii, it would be better for him to work on his painting.
He wrote to Samoilov again and again - both in sketches for Pompeii and just portraits from different angles. He did not have time to finish them - she felt sorry for the time for her own portraits, and they were piled up in the room that the countess had allocated for his workshop. Yulia Pavlovna also appeared as Italian women in his genre paintings. By an amazing coincidence, almost all of his “beautiful Italian women”, captured by him even before meeting the countess, were so similar to her that later researchers of Bryullov’s work believed that Samoilova was depicted in “Italian Afternoon” and even in “Italian Morning” .
Nikolai Gogol, not knowing about Bryullov’s passion, described the women in his paintings this way: “She is not Raphael’s woman, with subtle, imperceptible, angelic features. “She is a passionate, sparkling, southern, Italian woman in all the beauty of midday, powerful, strong, flaming with all the luxury of passion, all the power of beauty, beautiful like a woman.”
And so it was. Otherwise, Yulia Samoilova would not have become his muse and the inspiration for his two main paintings - “The Horsewoman” and “The Last Day of Pompeii”. She commissioned him to “Horsewoman,” and in the multi-figure “The Last Day of Pompeii” Samoilova’s beautiful face is captured several times. Bryullov did not know how to expressly confess his love. His paintings became his recognition.
Few of her messages to “Precious Brishka,” as she called Bryullova, have survived, but those that have survived are full of tenderness: “My friend Brishka... I love you more than I can explain, I hug you and will be spiritually committed to you until the grave.”
“I entrust myself to your friendship, which is more than precious to me, and I repeat to you that no one in the world admires you and loves you as much as your faithful friend Yulia Samoilova.”
The relationship between Samoilova and Bryullov even in “Russian Italy”, known for its free morals, caused surprise. They seemed to be together, and at the same time none of them encroached on each other’s personal freedom.
While separated from Bryullov, Yulia Pavlovna met with other men, which did not cause jealousy in the artist, and she herself was interested in his hobbies without any jealousy. “Tell me where you live and who you love? Nana or someone else? - she asked in the letter. “I kiss you and I will faithfully write to you often, for it is a joy for me to talk with you even with a pen.”
When the Countess was once asked about their relationship, she allegedly replied: “Nothing was done between me and the great Karl according to your rules... Rules could exist for everyone, but not for me and not for Karl.” And yet, Samoilova once admitted to Karl’s brother, Alexander, that she and “Brishka” passionately wanted to unite their lives, but circumstances prevented them.
This circumstance was Karl Bryullov’s unexpected, like an outbreak of madness, infatuation with the young beauty Emilia Timm.
In 1836, Bryullov, crowned with world fame after creating the canvas “The Last Day of Pompeii,” returned to Russia. At home, the artist was greeted as a hero. He was honored with a personal audience by Emperor Nicholas I. Bryullov regarded the fame that fell upon him only as an opportunity to paint the canvases he had always dreamed of - on the theme of Russian history. He began work on the painting “The Siege of Pskov.”
Samoilova also visited her homeland. Whether she came so as not to be separated from her beloved, or on her own personal matters is unknown. If Samoilova followed Bryullov, she would be disappointed. Her “Brishka” was completely engrossed in creating sketches for the “Siege of Pskov”, and then went to Pskov to draw from life. He even stopped answering Samoilova’s letters. What was left for Yulia Pavlovna? There is only one thing - to shine in the light, demonstrating that nothing can hurt her, not even the sudden coldness of a person with whom she has never hidden her connection.
Samoilova returned from abroad and appeared at the station in Pavlovsk with a whole retinue of handsome men - Italians and French. .. her juicy lips, upturned nose and expression in her eyes seemed to say: “I don’t care about the opinion of the world!” - artist Pyotr Sokolov recalled the biography of those years. Incredible deeds were expected of her, but Samoilova managed to shock society only with her new habit of smoking a pipe.
But Bryullov’s wedding, unexpected for everyone, and the ensuing scandal shocked St. Petersburg society. Emilia Timm was the daughter of the Riga burgomaster, a talented pianist and an outstanding beauty, only of a different type than Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova: white-skinned and blond, fragile, young, innocent. Karl Pavlovich painted her portrait, which is now kept in the Tretyakov Gallery, and listened with pleasure to her beautiful singing. He himself admitted later that he had no intention of wooing her, but the girl’s parents showed activity, and he cowardly followed their lead.
He was thirty-nine, Emilia was nineteen, when their wedding took place on January 27, 1839. At the insistence of the bride's father, the young couple settled in his house. The first weeks of family life passed peacefully, but on March 8, Karl demanded a divorce. Bryullov explained his action in one of his letters as follows: “I fell in love passionately. The bride's parents, especially the father, immediately made a plan to marry me to her... The girl played the role of a lover so skillfully that I did not suspect deception. The girl’s parents and their friends slandered me in public, attributing the reason for the divorce to a completely different circumstance, trying to pass me off as a person devoted to drunkenness...
I felt so strongly my misfortune, my shame, the destruction of my hopes for domestic happiness... that I was afraid of losing my mind. An evil nonentity, trying to humiliate and denigrate those people to whom the public ascribes talent, usually presents them as murderers in Italy, and in Russia as drunkards.” At the same time, he kept silent about the true reason for the divorce: Emilia’s lover was and remained after the wedding her father, Feder Timm.
Yulia Samoilova, who hastily arrived from Italy, found Bryullov in a state close to suicide, but managed to rescue him. Only to inform him that she is getting married. The artist begged her to pose again and painted for her the painting “Countess Yu.P. Samoilova leaving the ball" - a gift for her wedding.
The countess' chosen one was the young opera singer Giovanni Peri. Samoilova moved to Italy, selling Grafskaya Slavyanka and all her real estate in Russia. She knew that Peri was sick with consumption, but she never thought that the disease would be so fleeting. Just a year after the wedding, Peri died. Yulia Pavlovna wore mourning for the rest of her life, but she loved to ride on the long train of her mourning dress along the polished parquet floor of the ballroom the children of numerous art failures, who now lived with their families on her estate.
She no longer met with Bryullov, although he also soon came to Italy to die. On June 23, 1852, the artist died in the town of Marciano near Rome and was buried in the Monte Testaccio cemetery.
Yulia Samoilova was in Paris at that moment and did not go to see her friend off on his last journey. I sent Karl’s brother, Alexander Bryullov, a letter with a short condolence about the death of “dear and mourned Brishka, whom I loved so much and whom I admire as one of the greatest geniuses who ever existed.” The fact that she continued to love him was judged by her acquaintances by the fact that, even after losing all her fortune and selling all her collections, Yulia Pavlovna did not want to part with only Bryullov’s works.
Friends of Samoilova claimed that Bryullov and the countess corresponded until the last days of the artist’s life. However, these letters have not survived.