Joel Rea is an Australian artist known for his surreal, photorealistic oil on canvas works. Highly acclaimed and multi award

Oh shi- This piece is called The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Bruloff. It was the artist's attempt to make a name for himself in the art world. So he went from making paintings like this to this. It was a painting that took around 5 years to make. A painting that ended up being his greatest masterpiece. A painting that feels so real and emotional, it's almost like the artist was there to experience that day himself. It's midday on August 24th, 79 AD. The people of Pompeii gaze in awestruck horror as lava rushes down Mount Vesuvius toward them. A thick cloud of ash blocks the sun from the sky with the exception of a piercing yellowish-green flash of lightning illuminating two statues tumbling from the sky. We can almost feel the ground tremble as buildings crack and crumble. Lava bathes the background in an ominous red glow and spews volcanic ash and rock into the terrified crowd in the foreground. August 24th started out like any other day. No one thought it would turn into this. We see a man carrying his wife, her limp body draped over his arms. A soldier and a boy try to carry an older man to safety. This man could possibly be their father or their grandfather. A bull wanders helplessly in the background. Panicked horses throw men from their chariots. A woman lies unconscious, possibly dead in the center of the street, her jewels scattered on the ground beside her. Her young child looks in our direction with a frenzied look on his face. A husband and wife shield themselves and their two young children from the falling debris with a yellow cloak. To the left of the painting, a mother embraces her daughters. Their faces reveal awe, agony, and horror. Tears well up in their eyes and overflow down their cheeks. A Christian clergyman stands beside them with an amazed yet calm look on his face. Toward the center of the painting, a priest in white looks over his shoulder as he carries an armful of precious metals. It's as if in this moment he reveals what's most important to him. To the left of the painting, a group of people gather on the staircase of a tomb. This is how this street got the name Street of Tombs. There's a woman with her arms thrown in the air, staring directly at us with a helpless look on her face. To the right of the painting, a young man attempts to help his mother up. This is Plinyus, also known as Pliny the Younger, who survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that day and lived to tell his story. Karl Brulov studied his letters to create this painting. Plinyus writes, Behind us were frightening dark clouds, rent by lightning twisted and hurled, opening to reveal huge figures of flame. These were like lightning, but bigger. Then my mother began to beg and urge and order me to flee however I might, saying that a young man could make it, and that she, weighed down in years and body, would die happy if she escaped being the cause of my death. I replied that I wouldn't save myself without her, and then I took her hand and made her walk a little faster. She obeyed with difficulty and blamed herself for delaying me. I look back. A dense cloud looms behind us, following us like a flood poured across the land. We had scarcely sat down when a darkness came that was not like a moonless or cloudy night, but more like the black of closed and unlighted rooms. You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting. Some were calling for parents, others for children or spouses. They could only recognize them by their voices. Some bemoaned their own lot, other that of their near and dear. There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death. Many raised their hands to the gods, and even more believed that there were no gods any longer and that this was one last, unending night for the world. If we look to the left of the painting, we see a man balancing a box of brushes and paints on his head. Maybe you recognize him. This is Karl Brulov, the artist who created the painting. Karl Brulov was born in 1799 in St. Petersburg, Russia. His talent showed through from a young age, and he began studying at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg at the age of 10. Brulov was awarded for his work in 1821 when he created the piece titled Three Angels that won him a gold medal and a scholarship to study in Rome. The trip was supposed to last three years, but ended up lasting 15. Brulov was very distracted during his time in Italy creating paintings for wealthy Russian aristocrats. His biggest task was to create a large-scale historical work on a serious subject for the Imperial Academy of Arts. But after five years in Italy, he still hadn't even found his subject. That is, until he took a trip to Pompeii. In the first century AD, Pompeii was a beautiful city at the Bay of Naples and at the base of Mount Vesuvius. But all of that changed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, burying the city under a layer of ash. And after this, Pompeii was forgotten for centuries until it was rediscovered in the mid-1700s. When excavation began, researchers uncovered a city frozen in time. It turns out the same layer of ash that had destroyed the city also perfectly preserved it. The excavation was still taking place when Karl Brulov visited Pompeii in 1827 with his brother Alexander, who was also an architect that took part in the restoration of the Pompeian Baths. Karl Brulov was captivated by the city and made sketches of it while he was there. When he showed the sketches to wealthy Russian aristocrat Anatoly Demidov, he decided to commission the painting from Brulov instead, and this freed the artist from having to abide by the rules of the Academy, who, at that point, had become very impatient with him. He decided to place the scene in the most recently excavated part of the city, known as the Street of Tombs. But why would Karl Brulov insert a self-portrait of himself in a painting about an event that Well, Brulov was deeply affected by his trips to Pompeii, so by knitting himself into this scene, he expresses the deep emotional impact it had on him. And maybe he's also saying that if he was trying to escape death and could only bring one thing, he'd grab his paints. It's thought that Brulov used a woman named Countess Yulia Samoilova as a model for the women in this painting. She was the love of his life. And this might be why so many of the women in this painting seemed to favor her. Sadly, their love story never worked out, largely because she was married. When this painting was first shown in Milan in 1833, it was an immediate sensation, and everyone loved it. Karl Brulov went from a guy who made cute genre paintings to a guy who made serious historical paintings. Despite its recognition in Italy, when the painting made its way to Paris, the critics were brutal, saying it was too dramatic and the portrayal of light and space was completely off. And they weren't wrong. The Last Day of Pompeii is super dramatic, but so is imminent death. They also thought the color red he used was quite gaudy. Overall, the consensus in France was that it was an impressive but flawed work of art by a talented artist. Needless to say, The Last Day of Pompeii got a lot of attention. And perhaps that was the best indicator of success for an artist. Because at the time in Paris, bad press was much preferred over no press. Eventually, Karl Brulov and his masterpiece returned to Russia, and when he did, the artist was an immediate celebrity, and was even compared to old masters like Michelangelo and Raphael. This was because The Last Day of Pompeii gained international recognition, which brought more respect to Russian art as a whole. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius lasted about 18 hours and took approximately 2,000 lives, or around 10% of Pompeii's total population. This piece is so chilling to me, because it shows the incredible force of nature next to the powerlessness of humans to do anything about it. Something I've had more than a few nightmares about. Yet, Brulov carefully tells a story with each person, reminding us that they weren't just a statistic. They were mothers, fathers, daughters, sons. Brulov didn't just create a beautiful painting. He also preserved that terrible day. Although I do question whether there was actually this new guy riding on a white horse as the world was falling to pieces around him, but I definitely think it adds, and I'm not complaining.