The Brazen Serpent is a giant painting by the Russian artist of Italian origin Fyodor Bruni (1799-1875), completed in 1841. It is part of the collection of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (inventory number Zh-5070). The size of the painting is 565×852 cm.
Bruni's inspiration for the painting was a story described in the Old Testament about how the Jewish people, led out of Egypt by the prophet Moses, began to lose faith and murmur after years of wandering in the stony desert. This led to God's punishment — a rain of poisonous snakes to save them from the deadly bites of a brazen serpent.
Bruni worked on this painting for about fifteen years: he informed the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts that he had begun work on the large painting in February 1827, and completed it in 1841. In 1833-1836 he worked in Italy, then he was called back to Saint Petersburg to teach at the Imperial Academy of Arts, and in 1838 he returned to Rome, where he completed the painting.
The painting was sent to Russia in the summer of 1841, after a successful exhibition in Rome. It was exhibited in the Winter Palace and after a while it was transferred to the Academy of Arts. From the very beginning, "The Brazen Serpent" was often compared with Karl Bryullov's large-format painting "The Last Day of Pompeii", which appeared seven years earlier - later, both paintings were exhibited side by side in the Hermitage and the Russian Museum; they were called "colossi of Russian painting".
The surface of the canvas is about 48 m2, the weight of the canvas is about 70 kg. It is considered to be the largest Russian history painting, the largest painting in the collection of the State Russian Museum, and the largest among easel paintings of the first half of the 19th century.
Contents
Plot and description
The plot of The Brazen Serpent is based on a story described in the Old Testament, in the Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Torah. After years of wandering in the waterless, stony desert through which Moses led the people of Judah out of Egyptian captivity, the people began to murmur because they doubted the prophet's ability to lead them. Then the Lord's punishment came upon them-the rain of poisonous serpents. They repented and began to ask for forgiveness, and then Moses set up the brazen serpent, as the Lord had commanded him, so that those who looked at it with true faith would live and be healed of the serpent's bites:"Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a snake image and mount it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will recover.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole. Whenever someone was bitten, and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered’”. (Numbers 21:8-9)Bruni himself, discussing the idea of the painting, wrote: "I tried to make it so that at first glance it would evoke the pathetic pathos of this terrible scene and bear the stamp of God's punishment. The final version of the painting is a huge multi-figure composition, in which it is difficult to distinguish any main character. Some people seek salvation in the bronze snake, while others panic and try to avoid the rain of live snakes. Some are shocked by the death of their loved ones, some pray to God for forgiveness, and some curse him and Moses. The painting is full of depictions of grief, pain, horror, and death.
In the center of the painting, in the background, is the prophet Moses, pointing with his staff at the brass serpent and signaling with his other hand to approach it. His gaze is stern as he looks over the heads of the suffering people. Next to him stands the high priest Eleazar, son of Aaron, Moses' brother, and behind them a group of Levites. Moses and Eleazar are placed in the geometric center of the canvas, symbolizing supernatural power — on the one hand, to punish (Eleazar), and on the other, to show the way to salvation (Moses).
But it is not Moses and Eleazar, but the people in the larger foreground of the painting who first attract the viewer's attention. They are frightened and desperate, not even thinking of seeking salvation or looking at the bronze snake: it is as if they do not hear Moses or are simply incapable of heeding his advice. In the centre of the painting is a young man of athletic build, writhing in agony from snakebites. His leg is coiled with a snake, and his mouth is wide open: apparently cursing everyone "in fury and blasphemy". His figure is sometimes compared to Lanae. Sometimes his figure is compared to Laocoon, the priest of the god Apollo in Troy, who according to legend was strangled by snakes with his sons ("Laocoon and his sons").
History
Fyodor Bruni worked on the painting for about fifteen years, with the earliest sketch on the subject dating from 1824. In February 1827, Bruni reported to the Society for the Encouragement of Artists (SEA) that he was beginning to work on a large painting based on an Old Testament story. He noted that among his sketches, he had "stopped on one in particular, which I would like to produce in a large painting... it represents the erection of a bronze snake in the desert". The SEA's committee, which generally approved of the artist's idea, tried in the same year to warn him of the difficulties involved in creating a large multi-figure composition, to which Bruni replied that "the figures in the above picture will be life-size... and therefore the whole picture will be quite large, but since it has already begun, I do not want to leave it".
Fyodor Bruni began to work on the final version of the painting "Brazen Serpent" in Italy in 1833-1834. In 1833 he had underpainted a general sketch (cardboard), and in early 1834 he reported that his "painting 'Moses' will soon be finisged" and that "everyone is horrified by its enormity, especially the Germans", but he did not really care: "as soon as we have money, everything would be fine".
In 1835 it became known that Emperor Nicholas I had ordered Fyodor Bruni and Karl Bryullov to return to St. Petersburg "to take up professorships at the Academy of Arts". Since Bruni was still working on the painting "The Brazen Serpent", he tried to postpone the date of his departure from Italy, and the diplomat Nikolai Guriev, who was an envoy to Rome at that time, interceded for him. As a result, Bruni's departure was postponed until the beginning of 1836, but he did not finish the painting.
In the summer of 1836, Fyodor Bruni returned to Russia, where he was appointed professor at the Academy of Arts. At the Academic Exhibition in the fall of 1836, he exhibited his sketches for "Brazen Serpent", which aroused great interest and were noted in the press. In 1837–1838, Bruni continued to work at the Academy, but spoke of his desire to return to Italy to complete a major painting. In the end, the highest permission was obtained, the documents were drawn up, and in September 1838 Bruni went to Rome with his wife Angelica and his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Teresa.
From 1838, Fyodor Bruni continued to work on the painting in Rome. In 1839, he wrote a letter to the Minister of the Imperial Court, Peter Volkonsky, complaining about the difficult financial situation due to the fact that he had stopped paying his salary. By that time his family had grown — his son Alexander was born. However, Nicholas I initially refused, ordering that payments be suspended until Bruni returned to Russia. In the fall of 1839, Bruni wrote a second petition, pointing out that he was working continuously and "with all his energy" on a large painting "Moses", but the situation was such that "in this situation I must no longer think about my great painting — the only purpose of my trip to Italy, and the daily livelihood of my family, to which I must devote all my work. After this, the emperor changed his mind and ordered the resumption of the payment of salaries, "but in order that next year himself to bring here next year to complete his painting".
Reviews and critics
In the early 1900s, the Silver Age painter and writer Alexandre Benois wrote that "influenced by the grandiose success of Brullov" (meaning the success of the painting "The Last Day of Pompeii"), Bruni "took on a picture of equally colossal size: for his "Brazen Serpent", which was completed in 1840 and had the same success in Rome as "Pompeii", but a little less in St. Petersburg". In another book by Benois, "The Russian School of Painting", a whole chapter is devoted to a comparative characterization of Bruni and Brullov, mainly on the example of the paintings in question. In particular, he noted that "Bruni, in the splendor of his seasoned and almost flawless skill, leaves far behind him the uneven and often tasteless Brullov," but the reason for Bruni's less popularity is that he is inferior to Brullov in temperament. And further Benois explained: "his [Bruni's] art quite satisfied the requirements of the state, won the admiration of connoisseurs, but did not possess the means to impress the masses — something that Brullov's work undoubtedly possessed".
The literary historian and censor Alexander Nikitenko wrote in his diary on 27 October 1841: "I went to the palace and saw Bruni's painting 'Brazen Serpent'. I expected much more. It is a picture of various deaths, and where is the poetic idea of Moses with his miracle? Moses glimmers in the distance with a vague shadow, and all you see are heaps of dying people, depicted with horrifying truth. The artist was obviously concerned not with the artistic but with the anatomical truth of the figures".
The literary critic Stepan Shevyryov said that Bruni's painting inseparably combined two thoughts: religious and pictorial. The religious thought was connected with the depiction of what miracle true faith can perform to save suffering people, and the pictorial thought was aimed at "depicting the physical suffering of the distressed people". On this basis, Shevyryov believed that "the main action of the painting" was connected with the image of the woman being carried by her husband: on her face "a ray of healing has already shone". At the same time, according to Shevyryov, by depicting a man lying in agony in the centre of the painting, the artist "wanted to present us with a gloomy picture of unbelief".
Another literary critic, Vasily Botkin, noted that "opinions about this painting are divided: some see it as a deeply respectable work of the professor, others — the creation of a high talent. He himself believed that "the reason for such a difference of opinion lies in the fact that the artist did not give himself a thorough account of the idea of his painting, and the lack of internal, lively content was replaced by a dramatic variety of details", while emphasising that "art first of all requires a definite and itself clear idea".