Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), one of the greatest French painters, rationally synthesized the diverse tendencies of French and Italian art. His work is a salient example of lucid control by the mind over the senses.

The art of Nicolas Poussin is a visual record of progression from the chaos of youth to self-awareness, from self-control to intellectualism, and from wisdom to harmony. In the 19th century Paul Cézanne conferred the ultimate tribute: "Every time I come away from Poussin I know better who I am."

Poussin was born in the hamlet of Villers near Les Andelys, Normandy, in June 1594. His father, who had certain claims to ancient but minor nobility, came from Soissons; he was a military man turned farmer. His mother was the widow of a lawyer, and Nicolas was destined for the law. The boy, who knew Latin from childhood, received a sound education until he was 18. His proclivity for art provoked the disapproval of his parents, and in 1612 the presence of Quentin Varin, a minor mannerist painter, in the neighborhood occasioned Poussin's flight from home.

After a brief sojourn with the painter Noël Jouvenet in Rouen, Poussin went to Paris, where the patronage of a young nobleman from Poitou enabled him to frequent the studios of the portraitist Ferdinand Elle and the mannerist painter Georges Lallemand. About 1614 his noble friend took Poussin home to his château in Poitou, but his patron's mother did not like the alliance, and the artist departed on foot, reaching Paris exhausted and ill from malnutrition. After a year's rest with his family at Les Andelys, Poussin returned to Paris to begin a productive career.

Except for a trip to Florence about 1620-1621 and another to Lyons shortly thereafter, Poussin spent the years between about 1616 and 1624 establishing his position in Paris. He studied architecture, perspective, and anatomy; the mannerist frescoes of Francesco Primaticcio at Fontainebleau; antique sculpture; and the High Renaissance paintings of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian and the engravings of Giulio Romano. He frequented intellectual and artistic circles and met the Italian poet Giambattista Marino, for whom he executed a series known as the Massimi drawings. Poussin received commissions from the Jesuit Collège de Clermont in Paris and Notre Dame in Paris. When he left for Rome in 1624, he was a mature artist. On the way he stopped in Venice, where the works of Titian and Paolo Veronese profoundly influenced him.

Works, 1624-1630

Between 1624 and 1630 Poussin's life was characterized by professional vicissitudes and artistic experimentation. He vacillated, though always brilliantly, between his Paris style, based upon the study of Giulio Romano and antique sarcophagi (Victory of Moses, 1624-1626), the current Roman baroque style of Pietro da Cortona (Madonna del Pilar), the Venetian High Renaissance style of Veronese (Marriage of St. Catherine) and Titian (The Inspiration of the Poet), and the realistic style of Caravaggio (Massacre of the Innocents). The conspicuous success of this period was the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus (1628-1629) for an altar in St. Peter's.

In spite of the patronage of the Barberini family, the confusion resulting from Poussin seeking his own style among the multiple possibilities afforded him in Rome and the fierce competition of Italian, Flemish, and French artists resulted in another illness. After being nursed back to health in the house of the French pastry cook Jacques Dughet, he married the daughter Anne Marie in 1630. Poussin decided to abandon the field of official commissions, and from then on he devoted himself exclusively to the execution of small cabinet pictures, fastidious in workmanship, for a private and cultivated clientele.

Works, 1630-1640

In the 1630s friendship with Cassiano dal Pozzo, amateur of the antique, led Poussin into a milieu of modest but genuine scholars. At this time his concern was poetical, focused upon the dramatic themes of Tasso (Rinaldo and Armida) and the melancholy of Ovid (Arcadian Shepherds). Between 1633 and 1637 his subject matter shifted to the pageantry of the Old Testament (Adoration of the Magi), mythology (Bacchanals for Cardinal Richelieu, and ancient history (Rape of the Sabines, two versions). During this time the coloristic fluidity of Titian, which had characterized Poussin's previous period, gave way to a statuesque plasticity of figure style, recalling Raphael's Mass of Bolsena. Compositions were oriented parallel to the picture plane and delineated by a controlled, linear perspective.

Between 1637 and 1640 this rational tendency increased. Poussin used various pictorial methods of painting to elicit a specific response in the educated observer, trained to understand his expressive purpose in any given work. These were the ancient Greek and Roman modes. His earlier works had been mainly in the Hypolydian mode for joyful subjects of divine glory and paradise and the lonic mode for festive, bacchanalian subject matter. Now they became more austere, in the Dorian mode for stable, grave, and severe themes (The Israelites Collecting Manna); or martial, in the Phrygian mode for intense and violent themes. Poussin's fondness for the modes was motivated, according to his letter of Nov. 24, 1647, to P. F. de Chantelou, by a desire for didactic clarity in communication. For the sake of readability his compositions, from the late 1630s, were cautiously planned, the figures sculpturally modeled, the tones restricted to primary colors insistently repeated, and the psychological content underlined by emphatic, sometimes histrionic gesture and facial expression.

Return to Paris, 1640-1642

Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu had been urging Poussin's return to Paris since 1638, and in 1640 he did so. He was given the title of first painter to the king, a yearly pension, and lodging in a pavilion of the Tuileries Palace. His princely reception provoked the resentment of the artistic coterie. The official circle expected him to create a French "style" and be able to direct teams of artists and artisans. But Poussin was used to a contemplative atmosphere and to concentrating on a single, meticulously executed work, and the constant demand for adaptability and glib fluency in the creation of altarpieces, decorative ceilings, and designs for books, tapestries, and furniture was exhausting. Of his many Paris works the best products of that unhappy sojourn were the decorative schemes for the ceilings of the Orangerie in the Luxembourg Palace and for the Grande Galerie of the Louvre.

Mature Period, 1643-1653

In September 1642 Poussin returned to Rome, ostensibly to fetch his wife; Richelieu and Louis XIII died soon after Poussin reached Rome, enabling him to remain in his adopted country permanently. He passed the rest of his life modestly and placidly in his house in the Via Paolina, refusing countless honors, including the directorship of the Academy of St. Luke. The most important fruit of his Paris visit was a patronage truly worthy of his talents. Intellectual conservatives of the French upper bourgeoisie, like Chantelou, called forth, through their commissions, the best of the artist's talents, the embodiment of the French classical ideal.

Between 1643 and 1653 Poussin came to grips with the fundamental premise of his creative being, the triumph of human will over the passions, manifest in his works in the domination of intellect over emotion. The Holy Family on the Steps (1648), for example, reveals his rational procedure for achieving biblical truth. The observer is infallibly guided, through the selective simplicity and lucid formality of the essential compositional elements, to the climax of the representation, the enthronement of a nobly modest family on monumental stairs, and to the denouement, the movement of the Holy Family toward the observer.

In executing his works Poussin proceeded in the following manner. After a thorough reading of the primary sources, he made a preliminary sketch; he then constructed a small model stage upon which he could move, like chessmen, actual miniature figures made of wax. After making further drawings and altering the positions of the figures as he progressed, he made larger models. From these he painted the final scene, referring occasionally to living models to avoid sterility. Thus, by steady, almost pedestrian degrees the potentially dramatic theme was simplified to a lofty understatement. Such laborious procedures, dangerously susceptible to stereotyping by imitators, were adopted until 1690 for teaching purposes by Charles Le Brun in the Paris academic program; they also explain the objection, among even cultivated critics, to Poussin's not infrequent statuesque sterility and coloristic coldness in the works of his mature period.

Late Period, 1653-1665

In Poussin's late period he moved beyond the somewhat self-conscious and mechanical means just described. The triumph of human will over the passions, or intellect over emotion, became an ultimate statement of the reign of universal harmony over the seeming chaos of nature and human life. This final conviction is most telling in such works as Apollo and Daphne (1664), sometimes called his spiritual testament to the world, and Summer and Autumn, two of the cycle of the four seasons (1660-1664). Figures are set in wildly animated landscapes of fertility or desolation, forms are reduced to nearly cubistic abstraction, and action is drastically simplified. Poussin died in Rome on Nov. 19, 1665.

Further Reading

A great deal has been written about Poussin. By far the most reliable works in English are Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue (1966) and Nicolas Poussin (2 vols., 1967), and Walter Friedlaender, Nicolas Poussin: A New Approach (1966).

Additional Sources

Blunt, Anthony, Nicolas Poussin, London: Pallas Athene, 1995. Nicolas Poussin, New York: Abbeville Press, 1990. □

Poussin, Nicolas (b Les Andelys, Normandy, June 1594; d Rome, 19 Nov. 1665). French painter and draughtsman, active mainly in Rome. Although he spent almost all his career in Italy, he is regarded not only as the greatest French painter of the 17th century, but also as the mainspring of the classical tradition in French painting. His early interest in art was given direction when Quentin Varin (c.1570–1634), a mediocre late Mannerist painter, visited his home town, Les Andelys, in 1611–12 to carry out a church commission. Soon afterwards Poussin moved to Paris, where he probably spent most of his time until his departure for Rome in 1623, although these years are poorly documented and he may have travelled around France a good deal. The only surviving works from this period that are certainly by him are a series of mythological drawings (1622–3, Royal Lib., Windsor Castle) commissioned by the Italian poet Giovanni Battista Marino, who at this time lived in Paris. Encouraged by Marino, Poussin set out for Rome (he had already made two unsuccessful attempts to get there) and arrived in March 1624. Apart from an interlude in Paris in 1640–2, he lived in Rome for the rest of his life and his art was largely shaped by the cultural traditions of his adopted city.

Poussin initially endured hardship in Rome, but Marino's influence gained him an introduction to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, for whom he painted the Death of Germanicus (1626–8, Minneapolis Inst. of Arts), generally regarded as his first masterpiece. The cardinal's secretary, Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657), became Poussin's most important patron in Rome. He was not particularly wealthy, but he had a huge collection of prints and drawings relating to his passion for antiquity, and Poussin absorbed a great deal from this ‘paper museum’, as Pozzo called it. In the ancient world he found guiding moral principles as well as stylistic models—Reynolds described him as having ‘a mind thrown back two thousand years and, as it were, naturalized in antiquity’. In such an intellectual climate, his style began to shed an earlier tendency towards Mannerist elongation, becoming more classical, but for a time he was also influenced by the dynamic Baroque style that was emerging in these years. This is seen most clearly in the only picture he painted for a public setting in Rome, the altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St Erasmus, commissioned by Cardinal Barberini for St Peter's (1628–9, Pinacoteca, Vatican). His most personal work during this period is the Inspiration of the Poet (c.1628, Louvre, Paris), classical in design but Venetian in its rich colouring.

In about 1629 Poussin became seriously ill (Passeri says he was stricken by venereal disease) and was nursed back to health by the family of Jacques Dughet, a French cook working in Rome, whose daughter he married in 1630. The illness coincided with a change of direction in his work. His altarpiece for St Peter's had been coolly received and in 1630 he had tried unsuccessfully to win a commission for a fresco in S. Luigi dei Francesi, the French church in Rome; these failures seem to have convinced him that his talent was not for large public works, and henceforth he concentrated on pictures of fairly modest size for private collectors whose interests were similar to his own (several of them were indeed his friends). In the early 1630s he specialized in literary subjects from Ovid and Tasso, treated with a lyrical warmth (Rinaldo and Armida, c.1630, Dulwich Picture Gal., London), and he also painted some full-blooded bacchanalian scenes. From the mid-1630s, however, he put more stress on clarity of design, and Raphael replaced Titian as his chief inspiration among Renaissance painters. In addition to his pagan subjects, he painted religious themes, and he seems to have been able to reconcile Christian beliefs with certain philosophical ideas of the ancient world, particularly the Stoical ideal that virtuous equanimity sustains a wise person in any misfortune. He lived a quiet, simple life, in spite of his growing success, and although he had been something of a hothead in his youth, he came to believe that ‘peace and tranquillity of mind are possessions without equal’.

By the later 1630s Poussin had a high reputation in France as well as Italy, and in 1640 he reluctantly succumbed to official pressure and returned to Paris to work for Louis XIII. He was commissioned to superintend the decoration of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre (work wholly alien to his temperament), to paint altarpieces, and to design frontispieces for the royal press. His visit was ruined by jealousy and intrigue, and in September 1642 he returned to Rome—ostensibly to collect his wife, but in reality with no intention of ever going back to Paris. Fortunately for Poussin, both the king and his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, died within months of his departure and no attempt was made to coerce him back to France to complete the projects he had left unfinished. Although the visit was such an unhappy one, it had the positive effect of introducing him to cultivated admirers of his work in Paris, and from this point he worked more for French than Italian patrons. The most important among them was Paul Fréart de Chantelou, a civil servant. Poussin not only painted some of his finest works for Chantelou, but also corresponded with him at length, revealing much about his deeply thoughtful approach to his art. Clarity and rationality were the qualities he sought above all; in 1642 he told Chantelou, ‘My nature constrains me to seek and to love well-ordered things, and to flee confusion, which is as much my antithesis and my enemy as light is to dark.’ His working procedure was appropriately methodical, for he not only made numerous drawings, but also used wax models on a kind of miniature stage set (like Tintoretto before him) so he could study the composition and lighting with great deliberateness. He preferred to work in solitude and—unlike most artists of the time—never employed assistants.

During the 1640s Poussin's work reached a peak of classical grandeur, lucidity, and harmony. At this time his interest in landscape increased, and many of his finest late paintings have magnificent open-air settings in which the natural elements are treated with the same sense of order that he brought to his figures—trees and mountains being turned into forms of almost geometrical clarity. These characteristics are wonderfully exemplified in two great works of 1648 illustrating the death of Phocion, a Stoical story from Greek history (Earl of Plymouth Coll., on loan to National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff; and Walker AG, Liverpool). Together with the work of his friend Claude and his brother-in-law Dughet, Poussin's paintings in this vein were the basis for ideal landscape for the next two centuries. In the 1650s Poussin's style changed again, becoming imbued with an almost mystical feeling. His figures sometimes attain a superhuman grandeur and marmoreal detachment (Holy Family, c.1655, Hermitage, St Petersburg), his landscapes take on a new wildness and splendour, suggesting awe at the fecundity and power of nature, and his colouring has a silvery, otherworldly quality. The last works he completed were a set of four pictures representing the Seasons (1660–4, Louvre). By this time he had become almost a hermit, but nevertheless he was revered as one of the greatest artists of the age.

After his death Poussin's high-minded and rational approach made him the perfect embodiment of the ideals of the Académie Royale (see academy), founded in 1648, but in the 1670s his authority was challenged in an ongoing debate in the Académie between those who believed in the primacy of design (see disegno) in painting (Poussinistes) and those who—inspired by Rubens—emphasized the importance of colour (Rubénistes). Although the Rubénistes won the day, Poussin continued to be a major inspiration to classically minded artists into the early 19th century—indeed Anthony Blunt describes him as ‘the key to the whole later evolution of French art’. During the Romantic era, with its stress on self-expression, his influence declined, but his spirit was revived again by Cézanne, who declared that he wanted ‘to do Poussin again, from Nature’.

Poussin, Nicolas (1594–1665). French painter and draughtsman, active mainly in Rome. Although he spent almost all his career in Italy, he is regarded not only as the greatest French painter of the 17th century, but also as the mainspring of the classical tradition in French painting. He was born in Les Andelys, Normandy, and his interest in art was given direction when Quentin Varin (c.1570–1634), a mediocre late Mannerist painter, visited the town in 1611–12 to carry out a church commission. Soon afterwards Poussin moved to Paris, where he probably spent most of his time until his departure for Rome in 1623, although these years are poorly documented and he may have travelled around France a good deal. The only surviving works from this period that are certainly by him are a series of mythological drawings (1622–3, Royal Library, Windsor Castle) commissioned by the Italian poet Giovanni Battista Marino, who at this time lived in Paris. Encouraged by Marino, Poussin set out for Rome (he had already made two unsuccessful attempts to get there) and arrived in March 1624. Apart from an interlude in Paris in 1640–2, he lived in Rome for the rest of his life and his art was largely shaped by the cultural traditions of his adopted city.

Poussin initially endured hardship in Rome, but Marino's influence gained him an introduction to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, for whom he painted the Death of Germanicus (1626–8, Minneapolis Inst. of Arts), generally regarded as his first masterpiece. The cardinal's secretary, Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657), became Poussin's most important patron in Rome. He was not particularly wealthy, but he had a huge collection of prints and drawings relating to his passion for antiquity, and Poussin absorbed a great deal from this ‘paper museum’, as Pozzo called it. In the ancient world he found guiding moral principles as well as stylistic models—Reynolds described him as having ‘a mind thrown back two thousand years and, as it were, naturalized in antiquity’. In such an intellectual climate, his style began to shed an earlier tendency towards Mannerist elongation, becoming more classical, but for a time he was also influenced by the dynamic Baroque style that was then emerging. This is seen most clearly in the only picture he painted for a public setting in Rome, the altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St Erasmus, commissioned by Cardinal Barberini for St Peter's (1628–9, Pinacoteca, Vatican). His most personal work of this period is the Inspiration of the Poet (c.1628, Louvre, Paris), classical in design but Venetian in its rich colouring.

In about 1629 Poussin became seriously ill (Passeri says he was stricken by venereal disease) and was nursed back to health by the family of Jacques Dughet, a French cook working in Rome, whose daughter he married in 1630. The illness coincided with a change of direction in his work. He abandoned the competition for public commissions (his altarpiece for St Peter's had been coolly received) and henceforth concentrated on pictures of fairly modest size for private collectors whose interests were similar to his own (several of them were indeed his friends). In the early 1630s he specialized in literary subjects from Ovid and Tasso, treated with a lyrical warmth (Rinaldo and Armida, c.1630, Dulwich Picture Gal., London), and he also painted some full-blooded bacchanalian scenes. From the mid-1630s, however, he put more stress on clarity of design, and Raphael replaced Titian as his chief inspiration among Renaissance painters. In addition to his pagan subjects, he painted religious themes, and he seems to have been able to reconcile Christian beliefs with certain philosophical ideas of the ancient world, particularly the Stoical ideal that virtuous equanimity sustains a wise person in any misfortune. He lived a quiet, simple life, in spite of his growing success, and although he had been something of a hothead in his youth, he came to believe that ‘peace and tranquillity of mind are possessions without equal.’

By the later 1630s Poussin had a high reputation in France as well as Italy, and in 1640 he reluctantly succumbed to official pressure and returned to Paris to work for Louis XIII. He was commissioned to superintend the decoration of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre (work wholly alien to his temperament), to paint altarpieces, and to design frontispieces for the royal press. His visit was ruined by jealousy and intrigue, and in September 1642 he returned to Rome—ostensibly to collect his wife, but in reality with no intention of ever going back to Paris. Fortunately for Poussin, both the king and his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, died within months of his departure and no attempt was made to coerce him back to France to complete the projects he had left unfinished. Although the visit was such an unhappy one, it had the positive effect of introducing him to cultivated admirers of his work in Paris, and from this point he worked more for French than Italian patrons. The most important among them was Paul Fréart de Chantelou, a civil servant. Poussin not only painted some of his finest works for Chantelou, but also corresponded with him at length, revealing much about his deeply thoughtful approach to art. Clarity and rationality were the qualities he sought above all: in 1642 he told Chantelou that ‘My nature constrains me to seek and to love well-ordered things, and to flee confusion, which is as much my antithesis and my enemy as light is to dark.’ His working procedure was appropriately methodical, for he not only made numerous drawings, but also employed wax models on a kind of miniature stage-set so he could study the composition and lighting with great deliberateness. He preferred to work in solitude and—unlike most artists of the time—never employed assistants.

During the 1640s Poussin's work reached a peak of classical grandeur, lucidity, and harmony. At this time his interest in landscape increased, and many of his finest late paintings have magnificent open-air settings in which the natural elements are treated with the same sense of order that he brought to his figures—trees and mountains being turned into forms of almost geometrical clarity. These characteristics are wonderfully exemplified in two great works of 1648 illustrating the death of Phocion, a Stoical story from Greek history (Earl of Plymouth Coll., on loan to National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff; and Walker AG, Liverpool). Together with the work of his friend Claude and his brother-in-law Dughet, Poussin's paintings in this vein were the basis for ideal landscape for the next two centuries. In the 1650s Poussin's style changed again, becoming imbued with an almost mystical feeling. His figures sometimes attain a superhuman grandeur and marmoreal detachment (Holy Family, c.1655, Hermitage, St Petersburg), his landscapes take on a new wildness and splendour, suggesting awe at the fecundity and power of nature, and his colouring has a silvery, other-worldly quality. The last works he completed were a set of four pictures entitled The Seasons (1660–4, Louvre). By this time he had become almost a hermit, but nevertheless he was revered as one of the greatest artists of the age.

After his death Poussin's high-minded and rational approach made him the perfect embodiment of the ideals of the Académie Royale (see academy), founded in 1648, but in the 1670s his authority was challenged in an ongoing debate in the Académie between those who believed in the primacy of design in painting (Poussinistes) and those who, inspired by Rubens, emphasized the importance of colour (Rubensistes). Although the Rubensistes won the day, Poussin continued to be a major inspiration to classically minded artists into the early 19th century. During the Romantic era, with its stress on self-expression, his influence declined, but his spirit was revived again by Cézanne, who declared that he wanted ‘to do Poussin again, from Nature’.

Poussin, Nicolas (1594–1665) French painter who worked mainly in Rome. At first inspired by mannerism, he later concentrated on antique art, specializing in mythological subjects. In the late 1630s, he turned to more elaborate Old Testament and historical themes. Among his notable works are The Eucharist (1644–48) and The Seven Sacraments (1648).

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk; http://www.metmuseum.org; http://www.getty.edu