Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/85

 Western masters. He began with bold and vital works, but little by little he grew stiff and lifeless. This change was undoubtedly furthered by his life in Rome, which he visited twice, in 1816 and in 1826, and where he died in 1836. In spite of his passionate temperament and his astonishing love of adventure, in spite of his fantastic romance, which resulted in his marriage with his own adopted daughter, Kiprensky was transformed, in Rome, into a pedantic, at times even a commonplace, worker. In the very heyday of Romanticism Rome was still the centre of classical theories which had already served their time in other countries. In the years which saw the creation of Delacroix's "Dante and Virgil," Rome still believed in the exclusive worth of the classics and of the rigid line; and, of course, the alumnus of the Petrograd Academy, the son of the house-steward Adam Schwalbe, was not the man to set at naught this doctrine. On the contrary, it took hold of him, made him seek "more dignified subjects" than portraits, and bade him ignore "frivolous colour."

Together with Kiprensky there must be mentioned the Pole, Orlovsky (1777–1832), who came to Petrograd early in the nineteenth century, after a whole series of adventures, such as a duel, an escape with a