Italienischer Morgen

This was, in a way, Karl Bryullov's homework. In 1822 a private society in St Petersburg that funded promising artists sent him to Italy, and pictures like this 1823 morning scene were what he shipped back as proof the money was well spent. He chose a plain subject, a young Italian woman at a fountain in early light, mainly to show off a hard trick: the way sun pours through thin streams of water and glows through skin from behind. It worked. The image so pleased the imperial family that it entered their collection, and Bryullov was asked to paint a companion, an Italian afternoon. He was still years away from the huge canvas, the Last Day of Pompeii, that would make him famous.