‘Messalina’ was created by Pavel Svedomsky in 1900. The painter depicted a piquant scene from the 1st century Roman history — one of Messalina’s adulteries. Messalina was the third wife of the Roman emperor Claudius and possessed great influence. The power-hungry woman, whose name would later become a byword, was notoriously known for her voluptuousness and unrestrained personality. In this picture, she is depicted in the arms of one of her lovers.
The artist used classical rules to depict Messalina and her companion, creating the volume by using light and shadow effects and outlining the figures with folds of fabrics. The characters catch the eye of the viewer with their perfectly elegant beauty.
Svedomsky managed to enliven the composition with various details: the fountain stone, which turned green from the water exposure, and the highly realistic cracks on the wooden awning. At the same time, the detailing does not draw attention away from the love scene and merely makes the canvas more expressive.
Such impeccable technique hints at Pavel Svedomsky’s excellent academic training. The Academy preferred those paintings that were created according to the classical principles and depicted historical and mythological scenes, so the artists were required to bring the image to perfection by creating a composition balanced in colors and lines. Being once a student of the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts, Svedomsky shared this philosophy.
Pavel Svedomsky was born into a noble family. His older brother Alexander also became an artist. In the early 1870s, the brothers traveled together to France and Italy, and in 1875, they settled in Rome and set up a joint workshop at Via Margutta street. The Svedomsky brothers did not sever ties with Russia — they were even nicknamed ‘birds of passage’ for the fact that they used to reside in Rome in winter and then relocate to their Russian estate Mikhaylovskoye in summer.
Contemporaries highly esteemed Pavel Svedomsky’s artwork — he was called “an indefatigable painter, sincerely devoted to art”. He worked in the history painting genre and was awarded by the Imperial Academy of Arts more than once.
However, at the turn of the 20th century, the history painting genre was in decline. The academism slowly became an outdated movement, with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism now taking the stage. The young artists created vivid paintings with completely new pictorial techniques, while breaking the rules of perspective and distorting the shapes and outlines of objects. Despite all that, the pictures of the Svedomsky brothers were still in demand: people from the US and Europe, as well as Pavel Tretyakov himself and other Russian connoisseurs sought them out. “Messalina” belonged to one of the Russian collectors — the merchant Leonty Kekin from Kazan.
The artist used classical rules to depict Messalina and her companion, creating the volume by using light and shadow effects and outlining the figures with folds of fabrics. The characters catch the eye of the viewer with their perfectly elegant beauty.
Svedomsky managed to enliven the composition with various details: the fountain stone, which turned green from the water exposure, and the highly realistic cracks on the wooden awning. At the same time, the detailing does not draw attention away from the love scene and merely makes the canvas more expressive.
Such impeccable technique hints at Pavel Svedomsky’s excellent academic training. The Academy preferred those paintings that were created according to the classical principles and depicted historical and mythological scenes, so the artists were required to bring the image to perfection by creating a composition balanced in colors and lines. Being once a student of the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts, Svedomsky shared this philosophy.
Pavel Svedomsky was born into a noble family. His older brother Alexander also became an artist. In the early 1870s, the brothers traveled together to France and Italy, and in 1875, they settled in Rome and set up a joint workshop at Via Margutta street. The Svedomsky brothers did not sever ties with Russia — they were even nicknamed ‘birds of passage’ for the fact that they used to reside in Rome in winter and then relocate to their Russian estate Mikhaylovskoye in summer.
Contemporaries highly esteemed Pavel Svedomsky’s artwork — he was called “an indefatigable painter, sincerely devoted to art”. He worked in the history painting genre and was awarded by the Imperial Academy of Arts more than once.
However, at the turn of the 20th century, the history painting genre was in decline. The academism slowly became an outdated movement, with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism now taking the stage. The young artists created vivid paintings with completely new pictorial techniques, while breaking the rules of perspective and distorting the shapes and outlines of objects. Despite all that, the pictures of the Svedomsky brothers were still in demand: people from the US and Europe, as well as Pavel Tretyakov himself and other Russian connoisseurs sought them out. “Messalina” belonged to one of the Russian collectors — the merchant Leonty Kekin from Kazan.
