Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) by S. Spooner (pdf to ebook reader .TXT) 📕

costume, instantly attacked them. They all

fled but Poussin, who was surrounded, and received a cut from a sabre

between the first and second finger. Passeri, who relates the anecdote,

says that the sword turned, otherwise "a great misfortune must have

happened both to him and to painting." Not daunted, however, he fought

under the shelter of his portfolio, throwing stones as he retreated,

till being recognized by some Romans who took his part, he effected his

escape to his lodgings. From that day he put on the Roman dress,

adopted the Roman way of living, and became so much a Roman, that he

considered the city as his true home.

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN'S HABITS OF STUDY.

 

 

Poussin not only studied every vestige of antiquity at Rome and in its

environs, with the greatest assiduity while young, but he followed this

practice through life. It was his delight to spend every hour he could

spare at the different villas in the neighborhood of Rome, where,

besides the most beautiful remains of antiquity, he enjoyed the

unrivalled landscape which surrounds that city, so much dignified by the

noble works of ancient days, that every hill is classical, the very

trees have a poetic air, and everything combines to excite in the soul a

kind of dreaming rapture from which it would not be awakened, and which

those who have not felt it can scarcely understand.

 

He restored the antique temples, and made plans and accurate drawings of

the fragments of ancient Rome; and there are few of his pictures, where

the subject admits of it, in which we may not trace the buildings, both

of the ancient and the modern city. In the beautiful landscape of the

death of Eurydice, the bridge and castle of St. Angelo, and the tower,

commonly called that of Nero, form the middle ground of the picture. The

castle of St. Angelo appears again in one of his pictures of the

Exposing of Moses; and the pyramid of Caius Cestius, the Pantheon, the

ruins of the Forum, and the walls of Rome, may be recognised in the

Finding of Moses, and several others of his remarkable pictures.

 

"I have often admired," said Vigneul de Marville, who knew him at a late

period of his life, "the love he had for his art. Old as he was, I

frequently saw him among the ruins of ancient Rome, out in the Campagna,

or along the banks of the Tyber, sketching a scene which had pleased

him; and I often met him with his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or

flowers, which he carried home, that he might copy them exactly from

nature. One day I asked him, how he had attained to such a degree of

perfection as to have gained so high a rank among the great painters of

Italy? He answered, '_I have neglected nothing!_'"

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN'S OLD AGE.

 

 

The genius of Poussin seems to have gained vigor with age. Nearly his

last works, which were begun in 1660, and sent to Paris 1664, were the

four pictures, allegorical of the seasons, which he painted for the Duc

de Richelieu. He chose the terrestrial paradise, in all the freshness of

creation, to designate spring. The beautiful story of Boaz and Ruth

formed the subject of summer. Autumn was aptly pictured, in the two

Israelites bearing the bunch of grapes from the Promised Land. But the

masterpiece was Winter, represented in the Deluge. This picture has

been, perhaps, the most praised of all Poussin's works. A narrow space,

and a very few persons have sufficed him for this powerful

representation of that great catastrophe. The sun's disc is darkened

with clouds; the lightning shoots in forked flashes through the air:

nothing but the roofs of the highest houses are visible above the

distant water upon which the ark floats, on a level with the highest

mountains. Nearer, where the waters, pent in by rocks, form a cataract,

a boat is forced down the fall, and the wretches who had sought safety

in it are perishing: but the most pathetic incident is brought close to

the spectator. A mother in a boat is holding up her infant to its

father, who, though upon a high rock, is evidently not out of reach of

the water, and is only protracting life a very little.

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN'S LAST WORK AND DEATH.

 

 

The long and honorable race of Poussin was now nearly run. Early in the

following year, 1665, he was slightly affected by palsy, and the only

picture of figures that he painted afterwards was the Samaritan Woman at

the Well, which he sent to M. de Chantelou, with a note, in which he

says, "This is my last work; I have already one foot in the grave."

Shortly afterwards he wrote the following letter to M. Felibien: "I

could not answer the letter which your brother, M. le Prieur de St.

Clementin, forwarded to me, a few days after his arrival in this city,

sooner, my usual infirmities being increased by a very troublesome cold,

which continues and annoys me very much. I must now thank you not only

for your remembrance, but for the kindness you have done me, by not

reminding the prince of the wish he once expressed to possess some of my

works. It is too late for him to be well served; I am become too infirm,

and the palsy hinders me in working, so that I have given up the pencil

for some time, and think only of preparing for death, which I feel

bodily upon me. It is all over with me." He expired shortly afterwards,

aged 71 years.

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN'S IDEAS OF PAINTING.

 

 

"Painting is an imitation by means of lines and colors, on some

superfices, of everything that can be seen under the sun; its end is to

please.

 

_Principles that every man capable of reasoning may learn:_--There can

be nothing represented,

 

Without light,

Without form,

Without color,

Without distance,

Without an instrument, or medium.

 

_Things which are not to be learned, and which make an essential part of

painting._

 

First, the subject must be noble. It should have received no quality

from the mere workmen; and to allow scope to the painter to display his

powers, he should choose it capable of receiving the most excellent

form. He must begin by composition, then ornament, propriety, beauty,

grace, vivacity, probability, and judgment, in each and all. These last

belong solely to the painter, and cannot be taught. The nine are the

golden bough of Virgil, which no man can find or gather, if his fate do

not lead him to it."

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN AND THE NOBLEMAN.

 

 

A person of rank who dabbled in painting for his amusement, having one

day shown Poussin one of his performances, and asked his opinion of its

merits, the latter replied, "You only want a little poverty, sir, to

make a good painter."

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN AND MENGS.

 

 

The admirers of Mengs, jealous of Poussin's title of "the Painter of

Philosophers," conferred on him the antithetical one of "the Philosopher

of Painters." Though it cannot be denied that Mengs' writings and his

pictures are learned, yet few artists have encountered such a storm of

criticism.

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN AND DOMENICHINO.

 

 

Next to correctness of drawing and dignity of conception, Poussin valued

expression in painting. He ranked Domenichino next to Raffaelle for this

quality, and not long after his arrival at Rome, he set about copying

the Flagellation of St. Andrew, painted by that master in the church of

Gregorio, in competition with Guido, whose Martyrdom of that Saint is

on the opposite side of the same church. Poussin found all the students

in Rome busily copying the Guido, which, though a most beautiful work,

lacks the energy and expression which distinguish the Flagellation; but

he was too sure of his object to be led away by the crowd. According to

Felibien, Domenichino, who then resided at Rome, in a very delicate

state of health, having heard that a young Frenchman was making a

careful study of his picture, caused himself to be conveyed in his chair

to the church, where he conversed some time with Poussin, without making

himself known; charmed with his talents and highly cultivated mind, he

invited him to his house, and from that time Poussin enjoyed his

friendship and profited by his advice, till that illustrious painter

went to Naples, to paint the chapel of St. Januarius.

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN AND SALVATOR ROSA.

 

 

Among the strolling parties of monks and friars, cardinals and prelates,

Roman princesses and English peers, Spanish grandees and French

cavaliers which crowded the _Pincio_, towards the latter end of the

seventeenth century, there appeared two groups, which may have recalled

those of the Portico or the Academy, and which never failed to interest

and fix the attention of the beholders. The leader of one of these

singular parties was the venerable Niccolo Poussin! The air of antiquity

which breathed over all his works seemed to have infected even his

person and his features; and his cold, sedate, and passionless

countenance, his measured pace and sober deportment, spoke that

phlegmatic temperament and regulated feeling, which had led him to study

monuments rather than men, and to declare that the result of all his

experience was "to teach him to live well with all persons." Soberly

clad, and sagely accompanied by some learned antiquary or pious

churchman, and by a few of his deferential disciples, he gave out his

trite axioms in measured phrase and emphatic accent, lectured rather

than conversed, and appeared like one of the peripatetic teachers of the

last days of Athenian pedantry and pretension.

 

In striking contrast to these academic figures, which looked like their

own "grandsires cut in alabaster," appeared, unremittingly, on the

Pincio, after sun-set, a group of a different stamp and character, led

on by one who, in his flashing eye, mobile brow, and rapid movement, all

fire, feeling, and perception--was the very personification of genius

itself. This group consisted of Salvator Rosa, gallantly if not

splendidly habited, and a motley gathering of the learned and witty, the

gay and the grave, who surrounded him. He was constantly accompanied in

these walks on the Pincio by the most eminent virtuosi, poets,

musicians, and cavaliers in Rome; all anxious to draw him out on a

variety of subjects, when air, exercise, the desire of pleasing, and the

consciousness of success, had wound him up to his highest pitch of

excitement; while many who could not appreciate, and some who did not

approve, were still anxious to be seen in his train, merely that they

might have to boast "_nos quoque_."

 

From the Pincio, Salvator Rosa was generally accompanied home by the

most distinguished persons, both for talent and rank; and while the

frugal Poussin was lighting out some reverend prelate or antiquarian

with one sorry taper, Salvator, the prodigal Salvator, was passing the

evening in his elegant gallery, in the midst of princes, nobles, and men

of wit and science, where he made new claims on their admiration, both

as an artist and as an _improvisatore_; for till within a few years of

his death he continued to recite his own poetry, and sing his own

compositions to the harpsichord or lute.

 

 

 

 

POUSSIN, ANGELO, AND RAFFAELLE COMPARED.

 

 

Poussin is, in the strict sense of the word, an historical painter.

 

Michael Angelo is too intent on the sublime, too much occupied with the

effect of the whole, to tell a common history. His conceptions are epic,

and his persons, and his colors, have as little to do with ordinary

life, as the violent action of his actors have resemblance to the

usually indolent state of ordinary men.

 

Raffaelle's figures interest so much in themselves, that they make us

forget that they are only part of a history. We follow them eagerly, as

we do the personages of a drama; we grieve, we hope, we despair, we

rejoice with them.

 

Poussin's figures, on the contrary, tell their story; we feel not the

intimate acquaintance with themselves, that we do with the creations of

Raffaelle. His Cicero would thunder in the forum and dissipate a

conspiracy, and we should take leave of him with respect at the end of

the scene; but with Raffaelle's we should feel in haste to quit the

tumult, and retire with him to his Tusculum, and learn to love the

virtues, and almost to cherish the weaknesses of such a man.

 

Poussin has shown that grace and expression may be independent of what

is commonly called beauty. His women have none of that soft, easy, and

attractive air, which many other painters have found the secret of

imparting, not only to their Venuses and Graces, but to their Madonnas

and Saints. His beauties are austere and dignified. Minerva and the

Muses appear to have been his models, rather than the inhabitants of

Mount Cithæron. Hence subjects of action are more suited to him than

those of repose.--_Graham's Life of Poussin_.

 

 

 

 

REMBRANDT.

 

 

Paul Rembrandt van Rhyn, one of the most eminent painters and engravers

of the Dutch school, was the son of a miller, and was born in 1606, at a

small village on the