Gogol’ disegnatore: genere e fonti del disegno di copertina delle "Anime morte"

The essay is an attempt to analyze of the drawing created by Gogol for the cover of “Dead Souls”, a “strange” drawing, that specialists defined as unusual for the time. It contains objects introducing the subject of the poem and at the same time expressing the moralistic, didactical aim of the work: daily life things, skeletons and skulls. A combination of these elements is typical in the “vanitas”, a baroque genre painting, widely spread in Western Europe and Ukraine. A similar combination of arabesques, done by human skulls and skeletons we can find in Rome, in the Crypt of the Church of the Capuchins, in Via Veneto, well known by Gogol, who lived nearby and composed in Rome a large part of his poem. In the author’s opinion, it is a matter not only of reminiscence of this Crypt, but also of a deep tie with the typical cult of the dead, that took place in Rome in the first week of November. This cult was familiar to Gogol, who lived in Rome in November 1837, 1838 and 1840.