Newspaper readers in Naples Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (1782-1836)

Description of Orest Kiprensky’s painting "Newspaper Readers in Naples

The painting depicts four young men in the center. The man on the left is reading aloud a newspaper, and the others are listening intently to him. Orest Kiprensky referred to the men depicted on the canvas as Russians, although some of his contemporaries said that the artist said so in order to somehow smooth over the political controversy about the Polish uprising in November 1830. Another artist, Andrei Ivanov, wrote to his son Alexander Ivanov, also an artist, that Kiprensky painted portraits of Poles on this canvas.

Art historian Nikolai Romanov, who wrote about the history of art, suggested that the four young men were Poles living in Italy. In the foreground are Antonius Edward Odyniec, Adam Mickiewicz, Zygmunt Krasinski, and Alexander Potocki. Also, one man is holding a decorative dog in his hands.

To the right, behind the young men, is a picture of the waking volcano Vesuvius. At the time of Kiprensky his contemporaries considered the volcano as a symbol of revolution. So symbolically the artist expressed his sympathy for public sentiment.

The man reading aloud the newspaper, still holding the dog, which peeks out from under the newspaper. With this detail the artist draws the viewer’s attention to the newspaper article and emphasizes its importance.

Portraits of four young people was the first in the genre of group portraits. We can say that this painting is the fundamental one in this genre.