Romanticism
which Bryullov in his best days could have signed. It is the famous "Kiss," hackneyed by innumerable reproductions. This work, naive, and somewhat motley from the standpoint of colour, but fairly animated, breathing the youth of its author, belongs to that Italian, masked-ball variety, in which the European public took so much pleasure after the successes of L. Robert and Riedel. In the same spirit Moller executed a few other quasi-Italian and quasi-Romantic themes. Then came a change. Carried away by Overbeck's preaching, he devoted himself completely to his vast composition: "St. John Preaching at Patmos" (1857). The failure of this picture was the result of its ugly pink-azure colouring, of its conventional rounded composition, of its naïve contrasts and the mawkish expression on the faces of the personages.
With the exception of Alexander Ivanov, who stands somewhat aloof from the main stream of Romanticism, this movement did not produce in Russia a single great and original artist, but each of the romantic currents found there an echo. If Bryullov must be considered the representative of the historical tendencies of Romanticism, Bruni (1800–1875) is undoubtedly the echo of the Nazarenes. Only, however, a very faint echo. The mystical aspirations of the Nazarenes were mingled in his æsthetic formula, in a most bizarre manner,
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