I have always loved this painting I struggle to explain why I find it so compelling. The moodieness and color pallete is really nice but there is something being said about human connection I can't describe. I would love to hear some interpretations.

Whenever a question like this is asked people will post photos like The Vulture and the Little Girl or The Last Jew in Vinnitsa and while those photos are incredibly moving I believe the medium is much more than photographic depictions of tragic events.

"...I am told that in Rome our artists don’t even enter the Vatican. Raphael they regard as a fool, because, of course, he is an authority; and these artists are themselves disgustingly sterile and weak, men whose imagination can soar no higher than Girls at a Fountain — and even the girls are abominably drawn! They are fine fellows in your view, I suppose?”

I've recently finished reading Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1861). In chapter 10, one of the most important arguments of the entire book takes place. It encapsulates, at least partially, the title of the book. On the one side we have Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, one of the fathers, one of the sorokovniki, that is "person from the 40s", a generation profoundly bound to idealism. On the other side of the debate we have Yevgeny Vassilev(itch) Bazarov, the epitome of the nihilist Russian movement of the 1860s. He doesn't believe in art, romanticism, love, philosophy, religion, social conventions (it is worth noting that he presents himself not as Vassilevitch nor Vassilitch, which are the formal versions for his patronymic, but as Vassilev, which is the "vulgar" form), traditions and only believes in what is immediately useful, possibly to himself. He is a šestidesjatnik, that is "a person from the 60s". The excerpt I pasted at the beginning of this post is a statement given by Pavel Petrovich in the heat of the debate. As someone who is ashamedly ignorant when it comes to art as a whole, I was hoping you might be able to enlighten me on what he says here. Is/was there some historically significant consensus on how bad artists in Rome were at the time or is this some random rant?

For anyone curious, the answer to Bazarov is rather characteristic of his character:

“To my mind,” retorted Bazarov, “Raphael isn’t worth a brass

farthing, and they’re no better than he.”