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The French connection
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Nicholas Poussin evolved his own idiom and put his native France on the post-Renaissance art map
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POUSSIN'S PASSION He experimented with the prevailing styles
Nicolas Poussin, considered the founder of classical painting in France in the 17th Century, was born in June 1594 near Les Andelys in Normandy. His sketches attracted the attention of Quentin Varin, a local artist. Poussin was his student till he went to Paris. He found the art scene in Paris in a stage of transition between the old apprentice system and the new classical school.
Poussin met the mathematician Courtois and was fired to visit Rome. After two failed attempts, he reached Rome in 1624 with the help of Marini, Italian court poet to Marie De Médicis. Marini died soon after and Poussin was in a strange city alone, sick and friendless. He met a compatriot, a cook named Dughet whose daughter Anna Maria nursed the young artist. He married her in 1629. He died in Rome on November 19, 1665 and was buried in the church of St. Lawrence in Lucina. His wife predeceased him. Poussin did not have any children but adopted his brother-in-law, Gaspar Dughet, who was a painter of some merit.
Poussin turned away from the decorative art styles that were popular in France and opted instead for Renaissance and classical school. His paintings influenced generations of painters including Paul Cézanne.
In Rome, Poussin did not have time for the two warring art factions — the naturalists led by Caravaggio and the mannerists led by Guido. He detested the "naturalists and their partiality for ugliness and vulgarity" and said Caravaggio "has come to destroy painting".
In his first Roman period (1624 to 1640), Poussin experimented with the prevailing styles and soon realised he could not compete with the Italian masters on their own ground. His style became more romantic after the manner of Titian and in the 1630s he was influenced by Raphael and Roman antiquity and began to evolve a classical idiom.
His success in Rome attracted the attention of Louis XIII's minister, Cardinal Richelieu, who persuaded him to return to France. He reluctantly travelled to France in 1640 but was back in Rome after two years, unable to stand court intrigue. Poussin believed in reason as the guiding principle of art.
As Bernini puts it, "He was a great historian, a great teller of fables, an epic poet, in a word the foremost of his time and one of the foremost of all time."
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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