Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

This ugly remark was explained by the historian Peter Bartenev in 1911. According to Bartenev, Nicholas said it at tea, in a family setting, right after receiving word of the fatal duel, and elicited a “bitter rebuke” from his elder sister, Maria. After that reaction from his family, the emperor went out to meet his courtiers with a completely different statement: “Gentlemen, I have received word that the one who could have replaced Pushkin has been killed.”¹⁵

In the family circle, Nicholas, who considered Lermontov, like Pushkin, a good poet but a bad person (and an even worse servant), could have barked out a remark with soldierly directness. But outside that room, he spoke as politician, head of state, and father of the nation.

As a man, Nicholas could have been outraged by Lermontov’s inglorious death (as he saw it), especially since dueling had been banned by the emperor and was punished severely. But Nicholas also understood that Lermontov’s death, like Pushkin’s four years earlier, would not add any glory to his reign. His final words were damage control.

Much more humane was the simple and sincere response from the empress, who wrote to a friend, “A sigh for Lermontov and his broken lyre that had promised Russian literature to become its leading star.”¹⁶

Before his final departure for the Caucasus, Lermontov and a friend dropped in on the German fortune-teller who lived in St. Petersburg and was famous for having told Pushkin that he would be killed over a woman at the age of thirty-seven by a tall, blond man.

Knowing that her prediction had come to pass, Lermontov asked her about his fate: would the tsar allow him to retire? Would he return to St. Petersburg? People said that “the answer was that he would never be in St. Petersburg again, nor be retired from service, but that another retirement awaited him, ‘after which you will not ask anyone for anything.’ ”

Were these predictions legends or fact? At the very least they were characteristic of the atmosphere around the great poets. In their lifetime, but especially after their deaths, both Pushkin and Lermontov were turned into Romantic figures, surrounded by rumors, gossip, and posthumous legends.

A Romantic hero had to have a commensurate appearance. Lermontov’s eyes, like those of an unattractive woman, became the feature most mentioned; allegedly they were mesmerizing, with pupils that started moving quickly, “like an animal’s,” in moments of agitation. It was said that only the famous painter Karl Briullov could depict Lermontov properly, “since he painted not portraits, but gazes, putting fire in the eye.”

Briullov was the most celebrated Russian painter of the era, the only one to have achieved real success even in Europe, where his 1833 masterpiece The Last Day of Pompeii was a hit. He was, like Lermontov, not tall, with a big head and broad shoulders, but he had the face of Apollo, framed by luxuriant hair.

Like Lermontov, Briullov was a man out of Romantic legend, the personification of the idea expressed by the mad poet Konstantin Batyushkov: “Live as you write, and write as you live.”¹⁷ When he was seducing women, Briullov would tell them, “Don’t you know that every person is a novel, and what a novel! But God spare you from looking into my novel!—There are such black pages in it that they would soil your pretty little fingers.”¹⁸

When Briullov exhibited The Last Day of Pompeii at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, the enormous canvas that depicted with operatic melodrama a terrifying moment of natural cataclysm, a volcano spilling its lava on the ancient Roman city, captured the imagination of the northern capital, from ordinary folk to the emperor.

Anatole Demidov, a wealthy Russian who lived in Europe, had commissioned the painting and paid 40,000 francs for it; he presented it to Nicholas I, who “graced this gift with his magnanimous acceptance” and awarded Briullov the Order of St. Anna, Third Degree. The tsar summoned Briullov from Europe and appointed him as a professor at the academy. That moment began the unprecedented relationship between Nicholas and the painter.

The Imperial Academy of Arts was closely supervised by Nicholas I. He not only appointed and fired directors and teachers, he controlled the curricula, student competitions, and all commissions, observing their execution and giving “advice” (read: commands) on what to improve in a painting, sculpture, or architectural project. He considered himself a particular expert in battle and historical painting (he wasn’t bad at drawing).

Founded in 1757 by Empress Elizabeth I, in 1850 the academy was moved to Nicholas’s Ministry of the Imperial Court, and he turned it into a bureaucratic institution that functioned in strict accordance with the official Table of Ranks. Artists were given ranks equal to civil servants, with quasimilitary discipline and a detailed system of rewards and punishments.