_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593[71]-1665).
The life of Nicolas Poussin may be summed up in the cry of
Æneas, _Italiam petimus_--we make for Italy. He was born in
Normandy, of a noble family, and first learnt painting under
Quintin Varin at Les Andelys. When eighteen he went to Paris
and became acquainted with Courtois, the mathematician, whose
collection of Italian prints fired him with a desire to go to
Rome. This devotion to Rome became from that day the leading
point alike in his life and in his art. Among the artist
friends of his wandering years was Philippe de Champaigne
(see under 798). After several unsuccessful efforts to get to
Rome, Poussin made the acquaintance at Lyons of the Italian
poet Marino, who invited him to Rome (1624), and introduced
him to Cardinal Barberini. The Cardinal, however, was called
away, and for a time Poussin's life in Rome was one of severe
struggle. He also fell ill, and was nursed by a compatriot,
Dughet, whose daughter he afterwards married. The wife brought
her husband a comfortable dowry, with which a house was bought,
and the painter, now released from the pinch of poverty, was
able to give free play to his talents. In 1640 he returned to
Paris, where he was introduced by Richelieu (for whom amongst
other pictures he painted No. 62 in this Gallery) to Louis
XIII. The king appointed him his painter-in-ordinary, with a
salary of £120 and rooms in the Tuileries, but two years later,
disgusted with the intrigues and jealousies of Paris, and being
anxious to rejoin his wife, he returned to Rome, where he
remained--full of work--for the rest of his life. His house on
the Pincian, adjoining the church of the Trinita, may still be
seen, and he is buried in the church of St. Lorenzo. Poussin,
says his biographer, Bellori, led a regular life, rising early
and taking a walk for one or two hours, sometimes in the city,
but more often on Monte Pincio, not far from his house. From
these lovely gardens he could enjoy the view of Rome on its
hills; there he met his friends and discoursed on curious and
learned topics. "In the evening he went out again and walked
on the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the hill, in the midst
of the strangers who congregate there. He always had friends
with him, and often they made a kind of retinue. He spoke often
of art, and so clearly, that artists and all cultivated men of
talent came to hear his beautiful and profound thoughts about
painting." "During my sojourn in Rome," says a traveller of
that period, "I often saw Poussin. I admired the extreme love
this excellent painter had for perfection in his art. I met
him among the ruins of Rome, in the Campagna, and on the banks
of the Tiber, and I saw him carry home stones, moss, flowers,
and other things, in order to paint them from nature. One
day I asked him how he had attained such an elevation among
the greatest artists of Italy. He answered modestly, 'I have
neglected nothing.'"
It is Rome which gives the leading idea also to Poussin's
art. He has been called the "Raphael of France"; and certain
it is that at a time when the local art of France was purely
decorative in character, he returned, and strenuously adhered,
to classical traditions. Already at Paris he had studied casts
and prints after Raphael; and when he first went to Rome he
lived with Du Quesnoy ("Il Fiammingo"), under whom he learnt
the art of modelling _bassi-relievi_. He also studied anatomy,
and attended the academy of Domenichino, whom he considered
the first master in Rome. His profound classical learning has
caused him to be called "the learned Poussin." "He studied the
beautiful," says his biographer, "in the Greek statues of the
Vatican." "He studied the ancients so much," says Sir Joshua
Reynolds, "that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way,
and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they
would use on every occasion." His learning went, however,
farther than this in its influence on his art. His ideal, says
Lanzi, was that of "philosophy in painting"; and in one of his
letters Poussin illustrates the idea from the Greek theory
of "modes" in music. If a subject were serious, it should be
painted in the Doric mode; if vehement, in the Phrygian; if
plaintive, in the Lydian; if joyous, in the Ionic.[72] This
classical learning of Poussin was the source at once of his
strength and of his weakness as an artist. On the one hand, it
often made his work wonderfully harmonious and impressive. Thus
in the Ionic mode, his Bacchanalian pictures in this Gallery
and elsewhere are nearly the best representations in art of
the Epicurean ideal of life, of a world in which enjoyment is
the end of existence. "His best works," says Ruskin, "are his
Bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton, full of frisk and
fire; but they are coarser than Titian's[73] and infinitely
less beautiful. In all minglings of the human and brutal
character he leans on the bestial, yet with a sternly Greek
severity of treatment." Again, in more serious Doric mode, he
is "the great master of the elevated ideal of landscape." He
does not "put much power into his landscape when it becomes
principal; the best pieces of it occur in fragments behind
his figures. Beautiful vegetation, more or less ornamental in
character, occurs in nearly all his mythological subjects, but
his pure landscape is notable only for its dignified reserve;
the great squareness and horizontality of its masses, with
lowness of tone, giving it a deeply meditative character:"
see especially 40. On the other hand, he had the defects of
his training. It made him too restrained and too cold. "His
peculiarities are, without exception, weaknesses, induced
in a highly intellectual and inventive mind by being fed on
medals, books, and _bassi-relievi_ instead of nature, and by
the want of any deep sensibility." Thus he "had noble powers of
design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he
been trained in Venice;[74] but his Roman education kept him
tame; his trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies
of his age, and had few imitators, compared to the dashing of
Salvator and the mist of Claude. These few imitators adopted
his manner without possessing either his science or invention;
and the Italian School of landscape soon expired.... This
restraint, peculiarly classical, is much too manifest in him;
for, owing to his habit of never letting himself be free, he
does nothing as well as it ought to be done, rarely even as
well as he can himself do it; and his best beauty is poor,
incomplete and characterless, though refined." Finally, his
"want of sensibility permits him to paint frightful subjects
without feeling any true horror; his pictures of the plague
are thus ghastly in incident, sometimes disgusting, but never
impressive:" see 165 (collected from _Modern Painters_, vol. i.
preface, p. xxv., pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14; vol. ii. pt.
iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 19; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 28;
vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. § 17).
The wine-god is represented in infancy, nursed by the nymphs and fauns
of Euboea, and fed not on milk but on the juice of the grape. "The
picture makes one thirsty to look at it--the colouring even is dry and
adust. The figure of the infant Bacchus seems as if he would drink up a
vintage--he drinks with his mouth, his hands, his belly, and his whole
body. Gargantua was nothing to him" (Hazlitt: _Criticisms on Art_, p.
33).