Blunt on Poussin ... via the blogger "Spencer Alley"

Blunt’s work was the culmination of more than thirty years of a very deep interest, both in the artist himself and in the thinking about art during his lifetime.  You can read Blunt’s book online …

 

https://archive.org/details/nicolaspoussin0000anth/page/n7/mode/2up

 

 

If I may be blunt, Poussin idealized mythical figures in imagined settings, as did most painters.   I guess he was popular for his spacious and GRACIOUS and somewhat understated theatricality … and for the beauty and elegance of his figures in his warm idealized spaces.  His arcadian conception of the vast dreamy mythical landscape was delightful.  Also, he was valued for his subtle re-interpretation of so many written narratives.  His paintings, both the mythical and the religious, offer a key to many deep and meaningful conversations about classical culture and philosophy.

 

 

“Spencer Alley” ’s eighteen invaluable condensed posts are as follows …

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin-three.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_16.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_17.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_18.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_19.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_20.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_21.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_22.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_23.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin-old_24.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin-old.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin-four.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_27.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/02/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/03/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_1.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/03/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_2.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/03/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_3.html

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/03/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin_4.html

“Spencer Alley” even includes a long section about wrong attributions, copies, forgeries, etc.

https://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2021/03/anthony-blunt-on-nicolas-poussin.html

 

Three of the “stand-out” pictures among the many are …

 

ONE

Landscape with Orion

 

HISTORY: Painted for [Michel] Passart. Pierre de Beauchamp, Maître des Ballets du Roi, by 1687. Andrew Hay sale, London, 1745, bought Duke of Rutland; Duke of Rutland sale, London, 1758, bought Joshua Reynolds; Calonne sale, Skinner and Dyke, London, 1795, as from the Reynolds collection, bought Bryan (i.e. bought by Calonne's mortgagees); Bryan pictures for sale by private treaty, 1795; Desenfans; sale of pictures bought by him for the King of Poland, Skinner and Dyke, London, 1802; Philip Panné sale, Christie, London, 1819, bought Bonnemaison; probably sold by him to the Rev. John Sanford, who lent it to the British Institution in 1821; bequeathed to his son-in-law, Lord Methuen; sold by his son in or shortly before 1924; bought by Durlacher, London, in 1924; bought by the Metropolitan Museum the same year. 

 

"The immediate classical source for the composition is a description of a painting in Lucian: "Orion, who is blind, is carrying Cedalion, and the latter, riding on his back, is showing him the way to the sunlight.  The rising sun is healing the blindness of Orion, and Hephaestus views the incident from Lemnos."  As Professor [E.H.] Gombrich points out, Poussin's rendering of the subject differs from this in one important respect: Hephaestus does not view the scene from Lemnos but stands beside Orion, pointing out to the guide the way to the rising sun, and instead it is Diana who surveys the scene, though standing on a cloud and not on the island.  It was no doubt her prominence in the composition that misled [André] Félibien into describing the picture as a landscape "with Orion blinded by Diana," in spite of the fact that no classical authority attributes his blindness to the goddess.  Further, no classical source would explain the cloud on which the goddess stands and which rises almost from the ground near the trees behind the giant. Professor Gombrich has pointed out that all the details of Poussin's version are explicable if we suppose that he based it on the account of Orion given by the sixteenth-century writer on mythology, Natalis Comes (Natale Conti).  Comes bases his story on the obscure and curious version given by Euphorion, who attributes to the giant a triple paternity, the fathers being Neptune, Jupiter, and Apollo.  Since these three gods represent water, air, and sun respectively, Comes turns the story of Orion's birth into an allegory for the creation of clouds and rain, which are compounded of these three elements.  . . .  Strange though this allegorization of the story is, it accounts for all the details in Poussin's composition which are not in accordance with classical sources."

 

TWO

Landscape with Polyphemus

 

 

HISTORY: Painted in 1649 for [Jean] Pointel. Bought by [Denis] Diderot, with the Landscape with Hercules and Cacus, from the collection of the Marquis do Conflans in 1772 for the Empress Catherine II of Russia. 

 

"Here [in the Landscape with Polyphemus] the theme is evidently a moment in the early history of man, when he had just discovered the arts of agriculture.  In the middle distance we see men digging, plowing, and watching their flocks; in the foreground are three water nymphs, the symbols of the fertility that water brings to the land, one of whom, to underline her function, has hair of a blue-green color. Behind the bushes are hidden peeping satyrs, another traditional symbol of fertility, though in the animal rather than in the vegetable kingdom.  On the top of a mountain in the background is seated Polyphemus, playing on his pipes to an invisible Galatea, who is no doubt disporting herself in the sea, which is just visible in the extreme distance on the right.  In classical mythology the Cyclopes stand for the Golden Age before the invention of agriculture, when man lived off the fruits of the earth, and Polyphemus therefore symbolizes the age that is disappearing before the advance of man." 

 

THREE

Landscape with Hercules and Cacus

HISTORY: Bought by [Denis] Diderot (together with the Landscape with Polyphemus) in 1772 from the Marquis de Conflans for the Empress Catherine II of Russia. Sent to Moscow from the Hermitage in 1930. 

 

"The remaining landscape of this group, the Hercules and Cacus, belongs iconographically to a slightly different type.  It illustrates the defeat of the giant as told by Evander in the eighth book of the Aeneid.  According to this version of the story Cacus lived in a cave on the side of the Aventine.  Poussin's landscape bears no relation to the actual Aventine, but it follow very closely Virgil's description of the scene: "Now first look at this rocky overhanging cliff, how the masses are scattered afar, how the mountain-dwelling stands desolate, and the crags have toppled down in might ruin!  Here was once a cave, receding to unfathomed depth, never visited by the sun's rays, where dwelt the awful shape of half-human Cacus; and ever the ground reeked with fresh blood."  Then follows the story of the theft of the cattle, its detection by Hercules, and his attack on the giant, who had taken refuge in his cave.  . . .  Virgil then describes how Hercules throttles the giant, and finally, "the shapeless carcass is dragged forth by the feet."  Except for the fact that he shows Cacus as completely human in form, Poussin follows this description with great exactness.  . . .  The victory of Hercules over Cacus had been for centuries a regular symbol of the destruction of the forces of evil, and that is no doubt its principal significance for Poussin.  By using Virgil's text and locating the scene in the Aventine, Poussin is linking the story with the early history of Rome and so taking up again the theme of early Roman legends and history which had had treated in the 1630's, for, as Ovid tells us, the Ara Maxima was set up by Potitius on the site of the hero's victory over Cacus."

 

 

Blunt also comments on a very late painting, unfinished and given away by Poussin whilst his health was failing …

 

APOLLO AND DAPHNE

 

 

 

HISTORY: Given to Cardinal Camillo Massimi by Poussin in 1664, because the artist realized that he could no longer work and would therefore not be able to finish it; apparently sold with [Cardinal Massimi's] palace to Cardinal Nerli, since a picture by Poussin described as "un Apollo, che perseguita Dafne" appears in Rossi's Descrizione di Roma moderna of 1697, written when the palace belonged to the Cardinal. The picture is not mentioned in the edition of 1727, by which time the palace had been bought by Cardinal Alessandro Albani, but it reappears in Martinelli's Roma ricerata of 1750 and and in Roisecco's Roma ampliata e rinnovata of 1762; it is still mentioned in Melchiorri's Guida metodica di Roma of 1840, but the author was probably copying earlier guides without checking, since the picture was apparently by that time in France. Erard sale, Henry, Paris, 1832; Marquis de Gouvello; bought by the Louvre in 1869.    

 

"The Apollo and Daphne is [Poussin's] swan song in mythology – literally, because he gave it unfinished to Cardinal Massimi within a year of his death.  The picture is in every respect different from the paintings and drawings which Poussin had made around the story in his early years, and stands out even more among his late works by its stillness and remoteness, by the strange tensions between the figures, and by the intensely poetical atmosphere of the whole composition.  . . .  Poussin has followed Ovid closely in many details.  According to his version, Apollo, having just slain the serpent Python with his arrows, meets Cupid, who is polishing his bow, and mocks him for daring to use such a weapon, which, he asserts, is not for children but only for gods like himself to slay creatures like Python.  Apollo flies off, but Cupid follows and shoots at him one of his sharp golden arrows, thereby inflaming him with love for Daphne, while at the same time he shoots at her a blunt, lead-tipped arrow, which prevents her from ever returning his love.  Daphne then takes to the woods and becomes a huntress like Diana, and when her father, the river Peneus, proposes that she marry one of her many suitors, she begs him to allow her to remain a virgin.  The story ends with the pursuit of Daphne by Apollo, her appeal to Peneus to save her, and her transformation into a laurel, the theme most usually illustrated in painting."

 

"From this story Poussin selects the stage when Apollo has already been struck by the golden arrow and Cupid is about to shoot the leaden arrow at Daphne, that is to say, a moment which emphasizes the opposing effects of the two arrows on the victims.  . . .  Like so many of the late works, the Apollo and Daphne is divided sharply into two parts, but in this case the opposition of these two parts is also a direct expression of the allegorical theme.  On the left are all the symbols of life and fertility.  . . .  On the right is sterility and death.  . . .  The two opposed groups are bound together by the most complex network of tensions ever used by Poussin.  Apollo and Melia gaze at Daphne, who keeps her eyes shut as if to avoid the god's look, while Peneus gazes blindly at the spectator and points with one hand to the stream below him; Cupid looks and shoots in the direction of Apollo's gaze, while the two nymphs standing beside Peneus gaze across at the group on the left; the two nymphs seated at the feet of Apollo turn to look up at him; and one of those at the feet of the river god, though she looks up at him, points with one hand across the compositions at the two naiads near Apollo"