489. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), French,

Self-Portrait, 1650. Oil on canvas, 98 x 74 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris. Classicism.

 

 

Nicolas Poussin

(1594 Villers – 1665 Rome)

 

His career begins, historically speaking, in 1624 with his arrival in Rome at the age of thirty. He came to Italy in quest of Raphael, whose genius he had discerned from the engravings of Marc-Antoine while still in Paris. The master of the Farnesine and of the Vatican Stanze and Loggia did not disappoint him. However, Titian was a profound surprise to him, and from that time onwards his constant preoccupation was to reconcile the spirit of these two great men. At times he seemed to prefer a method hovering between these magnetic poles, and vacillated between the linear element derived from Raphael and the warm and coloured atmosphere which he admired in Titian. Poussin is one of the greatest landscape painters. His sketches are comparable only to those of Lorrain, and are perhaps yet finer, while some recall Turner’s most dazzling watercolours. Poussin is inferior to Titian in richness of colour as well as fullness and purity of form; but his poet philosopher’s genius added a lofty spirituality and an indefinable touch of the heroic to the symphony of man and nature.