worked in Kolomna, a tired, “ashen” part of St. Petersburg, which was also the home of a strange moneylender. This moneylender was rumored to be capable of providing “any sum to anyone,” but bizarre and terrible events always seemed to happen to those who borrowed from him. Specifically, his borrowers developed qualities contrary to their previous personalities: a sober man became a drunkard; a fine young nobleman turns on his wife and beats her. Many of his customers even died unnaturally early deaths. One day, the moneylender comes to the artist asking for his portrait to be painted, and the artist agrees, grateful for the chance to paint such a peculiar subject. However, as soon as he begins painting the moneylender's eyes, “there arose such a strange revulsion in his soul” he refused to paint any more. Despite the moneylender begging him to finish, the artist holds firm, and the moneylender dies shortly thereafter, leaving the portrait in the artist's possession. Inexplicably bizarre events begin happening in the artist's life. He becomes jealous of one of his pupils (revealed to be the young Chartkov), attempts to sabotage him, flies into rages, chases away his children and comes close to beating his wife. To make amends, the artist attempts to burn the portrait, but a friend stops him, taking the painting for his own instead. After witnessing its evil nature, his friend eventually passes the portrait to his nephew, who sells it to an art collector, who hawks it to someone else, and eventually the portrait's trail is lost. The artist feels immense guilt over the evil piece of art and makes his son promise to track it down and destroy it. This is the reason which brought the young man to the art auction. However, once he concludes his story and his audience turns to examine the portrait, they find it missing: someone must have taken it while they were listening to the young man's story. They wonder if they had seen it at all. Influences It has been argued that Gogol's influences can be traced to Western sources. That the plot of the demonic Kunstlernovelle seems largely derivative of Western authors such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Robert Maturin or Washington Irving. Author Eva Guðmundsdóttir compares Poe with Gogol and places them both in a category of the fantastic. Washington Irving, ETA Hoffman and Charles