The Last Day of Pompeii is a large history painting by Karl Bryullov produced in 1830–1833 on the subject of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

Critics in France and Russia both noted, however, that the perfection of the classically modelled bodies seemed to be out of keeping with their desperate plight and the overall theme of the painting, which was a Romantic one of the sublime power of nature to destroy man's creations.

[4][6] Also in literature, Bryullov read Alessandro Manzoni's novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) (1827) with its historically based account of a disastrous plague and the reactions to it of individuals.

[4][6] He eschewed the coolness and flatness of the then-prevalent Neoclassicism in favour of excitement and vibrant colour, combined with a deep recession as a horse bolts into the depths of the painting, unseating its master.

Nikolai Gogol commented: "His colouring is possibly brighter than it has ever been; his paints burn and hit you in the eye", but he was not the only one to note that the perfection of the classical figures contrasted with the wretchedness of their predicament.

Statues toppling from their pedestals bring additional drama and demonstrate the sublime power of nature over man, a common trope in Romantic painting.

[4][6] The painting took so long to finish that Demidov threatened to cancel its commission, but when it was first shown at Bryullov's studio in Italy on Via San Claudio in Rome, it received a rapturous response.

It still won a gold medal, but some critics saw it as slightly outdated compared to Eugène Delacroix's Femmes d'Alger dans leur Appartement (1834), which was exhibited alongside it, the high emotional content leading one critic to comment in L'Artiste, "l'impression est moins voisine de la terreur que du ridicule" (the impression is less akin to terror than ridicule).

[4][12] Rosalind Blakesley attributes this slightly behind-the-times feel to the isolation of contemporary Russian art teaching from the latest French developments since the start of the nineteenth century and the tensions inherent in the work between neo-classicism and romanticism.

[8] Five foreign academies made him an honorary member and the quantity of positive reviews and critical comment was such that the Society for the Encouragement of Artists published a volume of them in Russian translation.

It was at first exhibited in the Winter Palace, but in 1836 Nicholas donated it to the Imperial Academy of Arts where it remained until it was installed as the centre of the Russian painting display at the New Hermitage in 1851.