I Can’t Stop Thinking About This Painting

And neither will you.

We all love the story of what happened to Pompeii in August of 79 A.D. It’s exactly the sort of ghastly that human beings love to stare at for a good shudder. There’s a deep, primal need in us all to gaze upon the horror of our own mortality, and all the terrible ways it can come about, and feel an immediate thrill of gratitude for the present moment.

And Karl Bryullov, a prodigious Russian painter who studied in Italy during the early 1800’s, agrees.