Letter to the artist K. P. Bryullov

My dear Karl Pavlovich! It was with heartfelt sorrow that I heard about the illness that befell you. I am so far from you and cannot visit you, which is what my soul so desires! I hope to arrive in St. Petersburg by June 1st; After the necessary appearances to the authorities, I will certainly try to visit you. I am being treated, I am very weak and have not yet left the room. I can’t write while sitting, but I write while lying on the bed, and therefore I write with a pencil. I have always taken a heartfelt part in you. Your soul seemed to me wandering alone in the world. So I too wander, surrounded by disasters from infancy. A circle of friends has formed around me who sincerely love me, but I have not yet met a soul to whom I could completely open up. And this is not because I am secretive; no, I am very frank, but the soul, before which I could open myself with true benefit, must be able to understand me, examine me - must comprehend my very inspiration, if there is any inspiration in me. Without this, frankness is fruitless. Not only that, frankness in front of those who do not understand only inflicts a new ulcer on the soul. In my earthly wandering and loneliness, I found a sure haven - true knowledge of God. Not living people were my mentors, they were the Holy Fathers who had died in body and were alive in spirit. In their writings I found the Gospel fulfilled; they have satisfied my soul. I left the world, not as a one-sided seeker of solitude or anything else, but as a lover of higher science; and this science brought me everything: calmness, coolness towards all earthly trifles, consolation in sorrows, strength in the fight against myself - it brought me friends, brought me happiness on earth, which I have almost never encountered. You know how I live in the monastery! Not as a boss, but as the head of a family. – My health has been deteriorating for several years. For months, for six months, I don’t leave the room; but religion at the same time turned into poetry for me and keeps me in continuous wonderful inspiration, in conversation with the visible and invisible worlds, in unspeakable pleasure. I don't know boredom; time shortened, rushed with extreme speed, as if merging with eternity; eternity seems to have already arrived. I invite those who are oppressed by grief and driven to my pier to enter my pier, into the pier of Divine thoughts and feelings. They come in, rest, begin to experience peace, consolation, and become my friends. Your soul needs to enter this harbor! She hears, by some secret premonition, that she is destined to find peace in this pier; but my heart is open to you, has been open for a long time. I have long seen that your soul, in the earthly chaos, was looking for beauty that would satisfy it. Your paintings are expressions of a deeply thirsty soul. A picture that would definitely satisfy you should be a picture from eternity. This is the requirement of true inspiration. All beauty, both visible and invisible, must be anointed with the Spirit, without this anointing it bears the mark of corruption; it (beauty) helps to satisfy a person driven by true inspiration. He needs beauty to resonate with life, eternal life. When death breathes out of beauty, he turns his gaze away from such beauty. Get well soon, my dear Karl Pavlovich! Upon my arrival, I wish to see you healthy and strengthened. You still need to live, live in order to become more familiar with eternity, so that before entering into it you can acquire heavenly beauty for your soul; there has always been this high aspiration in your soul. The embrace of the Heavenly Father is always open to accept anyone who wants to run into these holy, saving embraces. Farewell; goodbye, which I long for. Archimandrite Ignatius April 27 (1847). First published: Bryullov Archive // ​​Russian Antiquity. 1900. T. 103. No. 9. Appendix. pp. 162–163. Published upon first publication. The content of the letter of Saint Ignatius to K. P. Bryullov (1799–1852) allows us to raise the question of the Saint’s attitude to secular painting, as well as raise the question of iconography, which is not yet directly raised in the message. Despite the friendly nature of the letter, Archimandrite Ignatius raises important and fundamental problems in it. Karl Pavlovich Bryullov, a Protestant by religion (formerly a Freemason, until 1822), was not, like his brother, architect A.P. Bryullov (and like other painters of that time), an exclusively secular artist. He carried out numerous church orders and painted images. In the Sergius Hermitage (near St. Petersburg), where St. Ignatius was the archimandrite, there was an image of the Most Holy Trinity made by Bryullov. As a graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, which in those years was focused on Italian painting, Bryullov, however, inevitably brought the skills acquired at his alma mater into the execution of icon painting subjects. Saint Ignatius' assessment of such works in the field of religious painting was generally impartial. “The students of the Russian Academy of Arts,” the saint wrote, “received education according to Western models and filled the churches with icons that were completely unworthy of the name of icons. If these icons, before which chaste gazes drop, did not stand in the church, then no one would have thought that the dignity of icons was attributed to them. A secular person, who has seen enough of everything and has extensive experience, cannot imagine the effect that such images have on virgin nature" (St. Ignatius, Bishop of the Caucasus and the Black Sea. The concept of heresy and schism. Unpublished works of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) // Theological Works. Collection 32. M., 1996. P. 293; This edition. T. 4. P. 468). The modern researcher, theologian and icon painter L. A. Uspensky also evaluates Bryullov’s experiments in icon painting as the work of a “Roman-Caholic” artist (see: Uspensky L. A. Theology of the icon of the Orthodox Church. M., 1996. P. 371). One of Bryullov’s contemporaries, friend of Gogol and A.A. Ivanova Slavophile F.V. Chizhov in 1846 noted: “Indeed, can anyone take as an image Bryullov’s picture - the Ascension of the Mother of God, celebrated by our Orthodox Church under the name and meaning of the Dormition of the Mother of God... Before the image we pray to the face of the Lady... before the Ascension of Bryullov, forgive me, but agree that we truly think about a plump, beautiful woman and... by what should be a call to prayer, we destroy holy prayer" ( About icon veneration. (With the approval of spiritual censorship) // Moskvitian. 1846. N° 7. pp. 117–119). The greatest fame and glory for Karl Bryullov was brought to him by the large painting “The Death of Pompeii” (1833), painted in Italy, which was exhibited in August 1834 for public viewing at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. “I have always taken a heartfelt part in you,” notes Saint Ignatius in his published letter to Bryullov. From the further lines of the message one can judge that “The Death of Pompeii” made a special impression on St. Ignatius at one time. It is known with what delight Bryullov’s painting was received by his contemporaries. In particular, Gogol’s article “The Last Day of Pompeii,” dated August 1834, is devoted to the assessment of Bryullov’s painting - with the central image of a dead beauty in the foreground. In turn, as the creative history of Gogol’s story “Viy” (written in the same months) allows us to judge, the image of the dead luxurious Pompeian beauty from Bryullov’s painting served Gogol as a prototype for creating the image of the dead lady witches. Despite his high assessment of “The Death of Pompeii,” Gogol was well aware of the sensual nature of Bryullov’s painting. In the article, Gogol contrasted it with religious art and directly correlated it with pagan sculpture. In the same way, in “Viya” the “terrible, sparkling” beauty of the lady who “let Satan come to her” is, according to Gogol’s plan, a direct embodiment of the destructive “ideal of Sodomsky”. In a similar way, Saint Ignatius, as one can assume, in his letter to Bryullov primarily has in mind the same dominant image of the “Destruction of Pompeii” when, at the conclusion of the letter, he notes: “I saw long ago that your soul in earthly chaos was looking for beauty. A picture that would decisively satisfy you should be a picture from eternity. Every beauty must be anointed with the Spirit, without this anointing it bears the stamp of corruption; it (beauty) helps to satisfy a person driven by true inspiration. When death breathes out of beauty, he turns his gaze away from such beauty.”