Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art Part 8

Poussin not only studied every vestige of antiquity at Rome and in its environs, with the greatest a.s.siduity 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 n.o.ble works of ancient days, that every hill is cla.s.sical, 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 peris.h.i.+ng: 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 n.o.ble. 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 n.o.bLEMAN.

A person of rank who dabbled in painting for his amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 t.i.tle of "the Painter of Philosophers," conferred on him the ant.i.thetical 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 S. Gregorio, in compet.i.tion 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 friends.h.i.+p and profited by his advice, till that ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.sionless 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing the evening in his elegant gallery, in the midst of princes, n.o.bles, 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 Cithaeron. 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 banks of the Rhine, between Leyderdorp and Leyden, whence he was called Rembrandt van Rhyn, though his family name was Gerretz. It is said that his father, being in easy circ.u.mstances, intended him for one of the learned professions, but was induced by Rembrandt's pa.s.sion for the art to allow him to follow his inclination.

He entered the school of J. van Zwaanenberg at Amsterdam, where he continued three years, and made such surprising progress as astonished his instructor. Having learned from Zwaanenberg all he was capable of imparting, he next studied about six months with Peter Lastmann, and afterwards for a short time with Jacob Pinas, from whom it is said he acquired that taste for strong contrasts of light and shadow, for which his works are so remarkable. He was, however, more indebted for his best improvement to the vivacity of his own genius, and an attentive study of nature, than to any information he derived from his instructors. On returning home, he fitted up an attic room, with a skylight, in his father's mill, for a studio, where he probably pursued his labors for several years, as he did not remove to Amsterdam till 1630. Here he studied the grotesque figure of the Dutch boor, or the rotund contour of the bar-maid of an ale house, with as much precision as the great artists of Italy have imitated the Apollo Belvidere, or the Medicean Venus. He was exceedingly ignorant, and it is said that he could scarcely read. He was of a wayward and eccentric disposition, and sought for recreation among the lowest orders of the people, in the amus.e.m.e.nts of the ale-house, contracting habits which continued through life; even when in prosperous circ.u.mstances, he manifested no disposition to a.s.sociate with more refined and intellectual society. It will readily be perceived that his habits, disposition, and studies could not conduct him to the n.o.ble conceptions of Raffaelle, but rather to an exact imitation of the lowest order of nature, with which he delighted to be surrounded. The life of Rembrandt is much involved in fable, and in order to form a just estimate of his powers, it is necessary to take these things into consideration. It is said by some writers, that, had he studied the antique, he would have reached the very perfection of the art, but Nieuwenhuys, in his review of the Lives and Works of the most eminent painters of the Dutch and Flemish schools, in Smith's Catalogue raisonne, vol xii. and supplement, says that he was by no means deficient on that point. "For it is known that he purchased, at a high price, casts from the antique marbles, paintings, drawings, and engravings by the most excellent Italian masters, to a.s.sist him in his studies, and which are mentioned in the inventory of his goods when seized for debt."