Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin [ pu'sɛ ] (* June 15, 1594 in Les Andelys (Normandy), † November 19, 1665 in Rome) was a French painter of the classical Baroque style.

  • 7.1 sources
  • 7.2 Poussin in the literature
  • 7.3 secondary literature

Life and work

Poussin was born the son of an impoverished country nobleman and former soldiers of the royal army. Trained as a painter, he was 1612-1621 in Rouen and Paris. He received early artistic stimulation through knowledge of works of the school of Fontainebleau. He was its first major order in 1622 as part of the facilities of the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris, where he worked with Philippe de Champaigne.

In Paris, he met the poet Marino, who was interested him for the Greek and Roman mythology, in particular for the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Poussin illustrated Marinos epic tale of Venus and Adonis with drawings.

The first years in Rome

In 1624, he went to Rome, where the Cardinal Giulio Sacchetti Marino him recommended that further mediated him to Francesco Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII. He learned the painter Jacques Stella and Claude Lorrain know, Cassiano dal Pozzo, the secretary of Cardinal Barberini and the German painter and writer Joachim Sandrart, who should report about him later. In Rome he studied alongside Titian and Raphael ancient art, which stood him in dal Pozzo's collection and archive. In 1630 he married Anne Marie Dughet, the daughter of a French chef in Rome.

As a painter Poussin initially had great difficulty in getting a foothold in Rome, as most orders of the Pope and of the noble families of the Italians established as Guido Reni, Pietro da Cortona and the Carracci went. 1627, he was awarded on the recommendation of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and through the mediation of Cardinal Barberini, for whom he had just painted the image of death of Germanicus, a major public contract, a large altarpiece of the Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus for St. Peter. However, the picture was little public recognition and had no further orders for altarpieces result. 1631 he was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca.

As a result, he focused on images in smaller sizes with religious, mythological and historical themes, which soon found the appreciation of private collectors. As an intermediary between Poussin and art interested buyers his friend and patron dal Pozzo worked. In 1638 he received from dal Pozzo an order for a series of images of the seven sacraments, on which he worked for four years. For dal Pozzo Poussin made ​​on illustrations for Leonardo's so-called painting treatise, which had been prepared for the press, but was not published until 1651 in an Italian and in a French version.

Return to Paris

1641 Poussin returned at the request of the French king Louis XIII. and massive pressure from Richelieu reluctantly returned to Paris after he had repeatedly asked for a postponement. The king appointed him Director of the equipment of the royal buildings and commissioned him to paint the Grande Salle at the Louvre and with designs for carpet weaving. For the Cardinal, he painted the allegorical image of the time the truth eludes the attacks of envy. In Paris, it soon came to tensions between Poussin and established artists. Poussin could not make friends with his role and his duties at the royal court. In autumn 1642 he left Paris and returned forever to Rome. On December 4, 1642 Richelieu, 1643 the king died, and Poussin was able to work from now unmolested on his own terms in Rome.

Rome

Back in Rome, he again focused on images in smaller sizes with their religious and mythological subjects, in which he turned his interest over time increasingly mythologically charged landscape images. Purchasers of these images was initially a small circle of educated Roman art lovers who dealt with the study of antiquity. These Roman patrons included, among others Giulio Rospigliosi, who later became Pope Clement IX. , The Chancellor of the Pope Gian Maria Roscioli, the French ambassador to the Vatican, Duc de Créqui and Henri Valencay. Through the mediation dal Pozzo, the circle of his patrons expanded since the late thirties from Paris, where in the banker Jean Pointel he found an eager and wealthy patron next to his old friend and supporter Paul Fréart de Chantelou. Pointel owned more than 20 pictures of Poussin. From 1639 and 1640 derived his two self-portraits which he painted for his patrons dal Pozzo and Pointel. Between 1643 and 1648 he painted a second series on the seven sacraments for Chantelou. The death of Urban in 1644 and the flight of his nephews to France had also Poussin consequences. Dal Pozzo had lost his position and thus influence and important contacts. As a result, Poussin painted almost exclusively for its rich French authority, as Pointel CERISIER and Reynon.

In his last years he turned next to the mythological images propagated to religious themes. Height of his last period is the result of the Four Seasons, whose ambiguous and complex iconography has challenged the imagination of the artist again and again. As late honor by his native France in 1665 reached him certification as First Painter to France by Louis XIV.

Poussin died on 19 November 1665 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. The tomb was built there in 1830 after a design by Léon Vaudoyer. The bust of Poussin comes from Paul Lemoyne. The relief on the tomb was Louis Desprez designed on behalf of François -René de Chateaubriand after one of his most famous images, Et in Arcadia ego. The Latin epitaph could have been written by Poussin himself. It emphasizes the life-giving power of his art, he also works as Et in Arcadia ego or the two self-portraits [see bottom: Works (selection) ] self-reflective theme as a means of man against the omnipotence of death.

Painter of the Baroque Classicism

The classification of Poussin's work in an art- historical scheme is difficult. His work phase was indeed coincide with the flowering of the Roman Baroque, but his images are significantly different, both in form, ie in the screen layout and the color composition, as well as in their function and in their measure of the baroque images for the public space. Servants the Baroque painter the need of clients for representation and political and religious propaganda, as were intended and painted for the private aesthetic, intellectual, and artistic needs of collectors and connoisseurs Poussin's work. Although recorded Poussin suggestions Domenichino, the Carracci, or Titian, of crucial importance for his artistic development and his artistic goals, however, was his confrontation with Raphael and the art of the ancient world. Through contact with dal Pozzo he had also access to the latest knowledge about the early Christianity, as they were occupied by Antonio Bosio's Roma Sotteranea book, which documents the early Christian finds from Roman catacombs. The care of his studies of ancient literary and pictorial sources was reflected both in the structure of his images - the similarity with reliefs on ancient sarcophagi, for example - in the form and composition of the characters, as well as in the historical detail of architecture, clothing, weapons and other equipment. The clarity of picture structure and composition of the characters in the image is underlined by Poussin's celebration of pure and unmixed local colors that give his paintings an intense, luminous color.

His work in the Baroque era, at the same time focus on the art of antiquity earned him the name of a painter of the Baroque classicism.

The mode theory

Poussin has in the course of his life dealt repeatedly with art-theoretical questions. Apart from Leonardo's treatise, he knew exactly because of the desired illustrations, it was probably also aware of the collection of writings on painting the Theatinermönch Zaccolini had written. Zaccolini dealt with the problems of light and shade and acted from a series of optical topics. From Poussin himself there, in terms of the theory of art, but his statements about the different modes of painting, which he has written in a letter to Chantelou. He draws parallels to music-theoretical reflections of ancient authors to the character of the different keys, where different moods and emotions they evoke in the listener, are attributed here. In ancient Greece there was a division into five different modes: used for serious and rigorous topics at the Dorian mode, for pleasant and funny Phrygian, for action subjects the Lydian, for joy and divine topics to hypolydischen and funny topics the Ionian mode. Nevertheless, he stressed the importance of theoretical foundations of his art in his self-portraits show him with a book. As a result, painter and art theorist have repeatedly dealt with the mode theory of Poussin. In modifications it has made in the Decorum debate the theory of art of the 18th century, in which it came to the relationship and the propriety between subject and representation mode images.

Poussin turned his mythological, allegorical or religious topics before architectural backdrops or in idealized, " heroic " designated later as landscapes dar. His dramatic compositions he developed on the basis of wax models which he put in a peep show. In many cases, Poussin was considered rational painter, so to speak, as a counterpart to Descartes in the visual arts. Characterized he was of the neo- Stoicism, he put his thoughts about death and wisdom his religious paintings, his landscapes and mythologies.

Reception history

Poussin was long regarded as a model, and perhaps the most important painters of the French Baroque period until the 19th and 20th centuries wore the interest of the public at its abgetanen as academically and formalistic work. Although artists such as Cezanne, Picasso, Francis Bacon or Mark Liipertz had dealt extensively with his works, aroused only in 1960 the great Poussin exhibition at the Louvre again the interest of the art science. She then worked out the progressive elements of the art of Poussin, his rationalistic clarity and innovation.

Works (selection)

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