The Flight into Egypt: Nicolas Poussin - 1594-1665 - Review

Monaco: Musee de la Chapelle de la Visitation, 1997 44 pp; 8 color ills., 3 b/w

"Perhaps the subtlest art exhibition in of recent origin York City at the moment" in like manner one could read in the of recent origin York Times on Wednesday, October 22 1997 "is the single painting by dint of Nicolas Poussin hanging, on loan from the Louvre in the Frick Collection."(1) in what way often are Old Master paintings the bring under rule for newspaper editorials? Poussin, at no time a popular painter - there was no multitude in front of The Arcadian Shepherds when I visited the Frick - always has been abundant favored by connoisseurs. No other of advanced age Master has received such sustained shut up attention over so long a period from what, in a suitably old-fashioned revolve of phrase, might be called "art lovers" Unlike greatest in quantity of his Roman contemporaries - the Baroque artists who became real unfashionable in the 19th-century - Poussin at no time ceased to fascinate collectors and for a like reason has never needed to be rediscovered. His admirers usually identify him as a real French artist. Perhaps that is on what account in December 1994 the Grand Palais retrospective was replete of visitors every day at all times. I cannot imagine that this exhibition would have been as hosted in New York.

Predictably, the first full-scale Poussin exhibition since 1960 provided the occasion to rethink questions about connoisseurship, to at hand new archival evidence, and to debate the older interpretations of his art. It also became the occasion for the appearance of several fresh books about him. Since then, a number of additional publications - more than I have the time or capableness to survey completely (and I will not discuss the periodical literature) - have appeared.(2)

What makes Poussin's paintings almost unique is the methodological point in disputes posed by the history of their interpretation. His art is an iconographer's paradise, and plenteous of the literature is devot to debates about the exact significance of paintings of that kind as The Arcadian Shepherds. Rubens was more erudite; other 17th-century painters and printers created obscurer images. on the contrary although only a minority of Poussin's paintings artificial position obvious puzzles, there is a long-standing inclination for most of his champions to treat his art as highly esoteric. a certain quantity of other Old Masters - Piero della Francesca or Caravaggio, for example - have been analyzed newly in almost equally complex ways. on the contrary such accounts cannot appeal to biographical information, for relatively little is known about the lives of these artists. With Poussin, by dint of contrast, we have a great deal of biographical evidence from his alphabetic characters and from art writers who knew him - evidence that present-day art historians who analyze his paintings in highly esoteric ways inevitably must override.

actual often Poussin scholars seek the greatest in quantity complex possible readings of his words (and art); after all, he was the philosopher-painter. In To pull down Painting, for example, Louis Marin says that "The Arcadian Shepherds tells in what is at one time a musical and plastic manner, the twinkling of an eye when the song of the origin is interrupted, the silent flash when history intrudes upon the scene"(3) This true elaborate analysis seems to me on the contrary the fanciful play of a great scholar. Marin's work has been much praised, with equal reason the problem here must be mine. After proposing a highly cunning relationship between Poussin and Caravaggio, Marin stops to ask if when Andre Felibien said "Poussin could not bear Caravaggio and said that he had draw near into the world in order to overthrow painting," he did not mean something simple. "It could be argued that my interpretation . . is obviously excessive, the point being that Felibien simply intended to say that Poussin did not like - absolutely did not like - Caravaggio's work" (p 109) Marin is his have best critic.

on what account should we not give special authority to commentators who knew Poussin or were near contemporaries? What justifies highly composed of several elements modern interpretations? One answer to these questions is that 17th-century writers could not speak frankly about the perhaps heretical views of politics and religion in a certain number of of Poussin's paintings; another, that the sheer weight of this drawn out tradition of Poussin commentary may influence by what mode we now see his art. true interesting evidence about the interpretative tradition is provided by means of an appendix to Richard Beresford's "A Dance to the Music of Time" by means of Nicolas Poussin, which summarizes the literature from 1672 to 1994 devot to this painting.(4) When Beresford not aways the commentaries of Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Andre Felibien, John Smith, Walter Friedlaender, Erwin Panofsky, Anthony Powell, Denis Mahon, and many other writers, it becomes difficult to disregard for a like reason much verbal evidence. "Very not many of those who saw the picture," Beresford claims in presenting his hold interpretation, "can have had any real clear notion of its meaning" (p 51) No doubt the details are dim in ways that his discussion clarifies usefully, on the other hand the idea that "wealth take pleasure ined to excess will ultimately lead to poverty" (p 59) is neither gloomy nor esoteric.