The Last Day of Pompeii

Bryullov painted this in Rome between 1830 and 1833, and he had actually walked the ruins. He visited Pompeii in 1827, while the town was under active excavation, and was struck by the Street of the Tombs, where he set the whole scene. For the disaster itself he went back to the eyewitness letters of Pliny the Younger, who watched Vesuvius erupt in the year 79 and lost his uncle to it. When the finished picture was shown in Italy it caused a sensation, and it made Bryullov the first Russian painter with a real European reputation. Back home it moved Pushkin to write a short poem about it. Look for the painter himself in the crowd. On the left, a man carrying his brushes and paints on his head as he flees is Bryullov's self-portrait among the doomed citizens.