Pimen Orlov and the Italian Genre in Russian Painting of the First Half of the 19th Century

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Apennine peninsula offered a space for the development of diverse artistic processes. The combination of the ancient heritage and the southern climate provided a conducive environment for the creation of works of various scales and themes. The masters who came to Italy from different European countries were united in their artistic endeavors by a shared desire to glorify the beauty of southern life. In the visual arts, this aspiration was expressed through Italian landscape and genre painting. While the landscape painters focused on the landscape, the Italian genre combined a wide range of variations in the visual narrative of Italy, with a particular focus on domestic and portrait scenes. Our work focuses on works created by pensioners of the Imperial Academy of Arts and the Society for the Encouragement of Artists during their stay in Rome. Among the designated masters is the portraitist Pimen Orlov (1812-1865), who, after moving to Rome in 1841, managed to win the attention of foreign audiences while maintaining a connection with Russian clients. The objective of this study is to identify formal and stylistic features of Italian genre paintings, with a focus on Pimen Orlov's works. The extensive pictorial material provides an opportunity to gain insight into the differences in the formal and genre interpretation of Italian genre painting by artists of different European schools.