The Russian School of Painting
with academic Classicism. He never emerged from this compromise: on the one hand, owing to his education, he was too strongly impregnated with Classicism, on the other hand, his inner nature did not allow him either to break off with the Nazarene art, or to devote himself to it, heart and soul. His very life was not favourable to the development in him of an all-consuming passion and of a singleness of purpose: it flowed too quietly. Hardly out of school, he became famous through his magnificent painting "The Death of Camilla," which he completed at the age of twenty-two, and which is the best specimen in the Museum of Alexander III of the classical Russian school. In Rome, he fell in with sympathetic and restful people, among whom he continued his studies quietly and methodically. Bryullov's fame and the importunities of his admirers led him to essay his powers in the field of "colossal" art. Bruni's "Brazen Serpent" came seven years after "The Last Day of Pompeii." Although its success was not so great as that of Bryullov's masterpiece, it was met with universal, though calm enthusiasm. Henceforward, the names of Bryullov and Bruni, strangely alliterative as they are, become inseparable, and are always uttered in the same breath. When the new Petrograd Museum, now the Hermitage, was built, these two giants of Russian Painting
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