(b St Petersburg, 10 Dec 1798; d St Petersburg, 21 Jan 1877). Architect. He studied with his father, a craftsman who produced decorative carvings, and then in the St Petersburg Academy of Arts (1810–21) before studying architecture in Italy (1822–6) and France (1826–30). During the 1830s he designed buildings in a variety of styles, which were landmarks in the movement in Russia towards a Romantic picturesqueness. They include the Gothic Revival church in Pargolovo, near St Petersburg, the Gothic Revival house and wooden theatre in the Russian style in Grafskaya Slavyanka, the Lutheran church of St Peter (1832–8) in the Romanesque Revival style on the Nevsky Prospect, St Petersburg, and the caravanserai for Orenburg in the Mauritanian style. In the building for the Pulkovo Observatory (1834–9), near St Petersburg, Bryullov used the Greek Revival style, combined with an unusual cruciform plan for the main building. He also built the Mikhaylovsky Theatre (1831–3; now the Maly Theatre) and the Guards Headquarters (1837–43), both in St Petersburg. He was a highly talented designer of interior decoration, as can be seen in his restoration of the rooms in the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, after a fire in 1837, where he combined refined Neo-classical decoration with intimate details that could be described as Biedermeier, and in his alterations to interiors of the Marble Palace (1845–9), St Petersburg. His designs for hospital complexes, such as the Aleksandrinsky Hospital (1845–8) and the anatomical building attached to the Medical Surgical Academy (1861), both in St Petersburg, represent one of the earliest attempts in Russia to create styles that were free from the imitation of architecture of the past. Bryullov also painted Romantic watercolour portraits such as that of Ye. P. Bakunina (1830–32; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.).

Part of the Bryullov family

• Bryullov, Aleksandr (Pavlovich)
  • Bryullov
  • Observatory, §2(ii)(a): Other observatories: Neo-classical and later designs in Europe
  • Russia, §III, 2(iii): Architecture, 1830s–1917
  • pupils
    • Monigetti, Ippolit
  • works
    • St Petersburg, §IV, 1: Winter Palace
    • Tobol’sk