Alexander Ivanov

In 1830 the young Russian painter Alexander Ivanov arrived in Rome on an academy scholarship, meaning to stay a few years. He stayed almost 30, most of them bent over a single enormous canvas.

The picture was 'The Appearance of Christ to the People', showing the moment John the Baptist points out a distant figure to a crowd by the Jordan. Ivanov wanted it true in every part, so he made hundreds of studies from life, of heads, of bodies, of the ground and the water and the olive trees, some of those oil sketches now admired more than the finished machine itself. Money ran low, his eyesight and nerves suffered, and still the great painting was not done.

He finally brought it back to Saint Petersburg in 1858 and showed it to a public that received it with more respect than warmth. Weeks later he caught cholera and died, at 52, having given the best of his life to one image he was never sure he had finished.