Short answers, pulled from the story.
Karl Bryullov is best known for The Last Day of Pompeii, a large historical painting completed between 1830 and 1833. The work created a sensation in Italy and was compared by Pushkin and Gogol to the finest paintings of Rubens and Van Dyck.
Karl Bryullov was born on the 23rd of December 1799 in St. Petersburg. His father, Pavel Ivanovich Briullo, was an academician and engraver of Huguenot descent.
Karl Bryullov died in the village of Manziana, near Rome. He is buried at the Cimitero Acattolico there.
Bryullov trained at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg from 1809 to 1821. After graduating he left Russia for Rome, where he worked until 1835.
The Last Day of Pompeii, painted between 1830 and 1833, established Bryullov as one of the finest European painters of his era. Unlike classical historical paintings centered on heroic individuals, the work focused on the fate of large human masses, combining romantic lighting and sculptural figure work.
An anecdote about Bryullov appears in Tolstoy's essay "Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?" and later in Tolstoy's book What Is Art? Tolstoy used the anecdote in the context of a broader philosophical argument about the nature and purpose of art.