The Four Seasons (Poussin)
Encyclopedia
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
(1594–1665). The set was painted in Rome between 1660 and 1664 for the Duc de Richelieu, the nephew of Cardinal Richelieu. Each painting is an elegaic landscape with Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
figures conveying the different seasons and times of the day. Executed when the artist was in failing health suffering from a tremor in his hands, the Seasons are a philosophical reflection on order in the natural world. The iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
evokes not only the Christian themes of death and resurrection but also the pagan imagery of classical antiquity: the poetic worlds of Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Georgics
Georgics
The Georgics is a poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC. It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. It is a poem that draws on many prior sources and influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present...
. The paintings currently hang in a room on their own in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
in Paris.
Themes
The French born painter Nicolas PoussinNicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
had made his home in Rome since the age of 30. At the end of his life, from 1660 to 1664, he undertook his last set of paintings, The Four Seasons, a work commissioned by the Duc de Richelieu, son of Cardinal Richelieu. Work on the paintings was necessarily slow, because of general ill health and the continuing tremor in his hands, which had affected Poussin since 1640 and turned him into a recluse.
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
and for early Christians
Church Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops. Their scholarly works were used as a precedent for centuries to come...
the seasons represented the harmony of nature; but for Christians the seasons, often depicted personified surrounding the Good Shepherd
Good Shepherd
Good Shepherd may refer to:In Christianity:* The Good Shepherd , pericope found in John 10:1-21, and a popular image in which the Good Shepherd represents Jesus...
, and the succession of night and day also symbolized the death and resurrection of Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
and the salvation of man (1 Clement 9: 4-18, 11: 16-20 s:1 Clement (William Wake translation)).
Departing from the traditions of classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
or medieval illuminations
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
, where the seasons were represented either by allegorical figures or by scenes from everyday country life, Poussin chose to symbolize each season by a specific episode from the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
. For Spring he chose Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
in the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
from Genesis; for Summer Boaz
Boaz
Boaz is a major figure in The Book of Ruth in the Bible. The term is found 24 times in the Scriptures, being two in Greek ....
discovering Ruth gleaning corn in his fields from the Book of Ruth
Book of Ruth
The Book of Ruth is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament. In the Jewish canon the Book of Ruth is included in the third division, or the Writings . In the Christian canon the Book of Ruth is placed between Judges and 1 Samuel...
; for Autumn the Israelite
Israelite
According to the Bible the Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited the Land of Canaan during the monarchic period .The word "Israelite" derives from the Biblical Hebrew ישראל...
spies
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
returning with grapes from the promised land
Promised land
The Promised Land is a term used to describe the land promised or given by God, according to the Hebrew Bible, to the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob. The promise is firstly made to Abraham and then renewed to his son Isaac, and to Isaac's son Jacob , Abraham's grandson...
of Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
from the Book of Numbers
Book of Numbers
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
; and for Winter the Flood from the Book of Noah
Book of Noah
The Book of Noah is currently thought to be a non-extant Old Testament pseudepigraphal work, attributed to Noah. It is quoted in several places in another pseudepigraphal work, 1 Enoch, as well as mentioned in another, Jubilees...
. In addition to the obvious seasonal references, some commentators have seen further less immediate biblical references. The bread and wine in Summer and grapes in Autumn could refer to the eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
. The whole sequence could also represent Man's path to redemption: his state of innocence before the original sin
Original sin
Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
and the Fall in Spring; the union that gave rise to the birth of Christ
Nativity of Jesus
The Nativity of Jesus, or simply The Nativity, refers to the accounts of the birth of Jesus in two of the Canonical gospels and in various apocryphal texts....
through the House of David
Davidic line
The Davidic line refers to the tracing of lineage to the King David referred to in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament...
in Summer; the Mosaic laws in Autumn;
and finally the Last Judgement in Winter.
As well as this Christian iconography, the paintings could also contain mythological allusions to four deities of classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
. In Spring, Poussin reuses the device of a rising sun, previously employed in the Birth of Bacchus to denote Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, the father of Bacchus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
. In Summer Ruth with her sheaf of corn could denote Ceres, the goddess of grain and fertility. In Autumn the grapes could be a reference to Bacchus. The serpent
Serpent (symbolism)
Serpent in Latin means: Rory Collins :&, in turn, from the Biblical Hebrew word of: "saraf" with root letters of: which refers to something burning-as, the pain of poisonous snake's bite was likened to internal burning.This word is commonly used in a specifically mythic or religious context,...
is a symbol used in Poussin's previous oeuvre. In Winter the snake slithering over the rocks could be an allegorical reference to the classical underworld
Greek underworld
The Greek underworld was made up of various realms believed to lie beneath the earth or at its farthest reaches.This includes:* The great pit of Tartarus, originally the exclusive prison of the old Titan gods, it later came to be the dungeon home of damned souls.* The land of the dead ruled by the...
and Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
.
Gallery
The paintings
Given their complex iconographic references, the paintings themselves have a deceptive simplicity. However, in their composition, Poussin, painting in his seventies, used all the experience acquired through his life. Understatement is notable throughout the set. No attempt is made to dazzle the viewer with technique and Poussin seems to have taken great pains to leave behind all trace of the artist and let the grandeur of Nature speak for itself.Spring
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
In the Book of Genesis, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or the tree of knowledge was a tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. . God directly forbade Adam to eat the fruit of this tree...
. It is before the original sin
Original sin
Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
and subsequent expulsion from Eden: no snake is visible as Eve points out the forbidden fruit
Forbidden fruit
Forbidden fruit is any object of desire whose appeal is a direct result of knowledge that cannot or should not be obtained or something that someone may want but is forbidden to have....
to Adam. The picture shows a luxuriantly vegetated wood with varying gradations of greenery. Ominously the foreground is dimly lit. In the distance the morning sun reveals swans on a lake with meadows and mountains behind; early morning light can also be seen glimmering through a gap in the rocks and shrubs in the middle ground, echoing the iconography of The Birth of Bacchus.
Adam and Eve form a small static couple in the centre of the calm woodland, dwarved by the lush vegetation. Equally small, the robed figure of the Creator
God in Christianity
In Christianity, God is the eternal being that created and preserves the universe. God is believed by most Christians to be immanent , while others believe the plan of redemption show he will be immanent later...
can be seen high up on a cloud surrounded by a halo
Halo (religious iconography)
A halo is a ring of light that surrounds a person in art. They have been used in the iconography of many religions to indicate holy or sacred figures, and have at various periods also been used in images of rulers or heroes...
of light; He is pointed away from the viewer, departing as if aware of what is to come. The figures in the composition recall classic depictions in mediaeval miniatures.
As comments, the work is a perfect visual counterpart to John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
, written in the same period.
Summer
Frieze
thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...
, while further back a group of five horses can be seen, executed in the classical style of the triumphal arch
Triumphal arch
A triumphal arch is a monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road. In its simplest form a triumphal arch consists of two massive piers connected by an arch, crowned with a flat entablature or attic on which a statue might be...
es of Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. The bucolic scene is completed by figures of a peasant playing on bagpipes to the right and, on the left, a reaper quenching his thirst from a flask of wine while women prepare bread in the shade of the large tree in the foreground.
As has commented, in Poussin's elegaic treatment of Summer "the mood of the Georgics is raised to a kind of sacramental gravity."
Autumn
suggest that this might have been the last painting of the set to be completed. The lush vegetation of Spring is replaced by stoney ground with small clumps of grass. Only the apple tree in the centre bears fruit; the leaves are already beginning to fall from the two small trees on the left. Long shadows are cast by the evening sun, whose fading light catches a town nestling under a mountain in the distance and buildings perched on a rocky ledge to the right. The observer's eye is gently directed towards the central figures of the two Israelite spies by the lines of clouds and cliffs beneath them. As related in the Book of Numbers
Book of Numbers
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
, they need a pole to carry the enormous grapes; one of the spies holds a branch of oranges as large as melons. In the middle ground are a fisherman and a woman with a basket of fruit on her head.
In the central bas-relief composition, Poussin has used elements from an allegorical engraving from 1607 by Hieronymus Wierix
Wierix family
The Wierix family were a Flemish dynasty of printmakers in engraving in the 16th and early 17th centuries, active in Antwerp and Brussels....
for the classical figures of the two men with grapes. In Poussin's painting a woman can be seen gathering fruit on a ladder leaning against the tree, with the ladder appearing to rise out of the grapes. In the original the body of Christ rises from the grapes. This has suggested an iconographic interpretation of the apple tree as the Tree of Life
Tree of Life
The tree of life in the Book of Genesis is a tree planted by God in midst of the Garden of Eden , whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. Together with the tree of life, God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . According to some scholars, however, these are in fact...
– the heavenly rewards promised in paradise after salvation.
Winter
The dim outlines of Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...
can be made out floating on the calmer waters in the far distance. Contrasting with the jagged shapes of rocks and trees, the waterfall produces a horizontal backdrop for the frieze of stranded survivors in the foreground, uncertain of their impending doom. Poussin ominously places a snake slithering across the rock on the left of the picture, a symbol often employed in his pictures to conjure up a sense of horror. Additionally the presence of a snake plays a special iconographic role in the cycle, because it also serves as a reminder of the singular absence of a serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Reception and influence
Nicolas Poussin is regarded by many historians of art as one of the most influential figures in French landscape painting.In his paintings he looked for a harmony between vertical and horizontal elements, sometimes resorting to mathematical devices such as the golden ratio
Golden ratio
In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The golden ratio is an irrational mathematical constant, approximately 1.61803398874989...
. In landscape painting, in which the elements are mostly horizontal, he introduced classical architecture to make the Pythagorean right angle
Right angle
In geometry and trigonometry, a right angle is an angle that bisects the angle formed by two halves of a straight line. More precisely, if a ray is placed so that its endpoint is on a line and the adjacent angles are equal, then they are right angles...
s so essential to his methods, much studied later by commentators and artists alike. When Poussin's Seasons were first exhibited, they were immediately discussed by French academicians, connoisseurs and artists, including Charles le Brun
Charles Le Brun
Charles Le Brun , a French painter and art theorist, became the all-powerful, peerless master of 17th-century French art.-Biography:-Early life and training:...
, Sébastien Bourdon
Sébastien Bourdon
Sébastien Bourdon was a French painter and engraver. His chef d'œuvre is The Crucifixion of St. Peter made for the cathedral of Notre Dame....
, Loménie de Brienne and Michel Passart, a patron of both Claude
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...
and Poussin. As Brienne reported at the time:
-
- "We met at the Duke of Richelieu's where most of the inquiring minds in Paris could be found. There was a long and erudite discussion. I also spoke and declared myself for the Deluge. Passat felt the same way. LeBrun, who hardly rated either Spring or Autumn, gave a long eulogy on Summer. But Bourdon held out for the Earthly Paradise and on this he would not budge."
Unlike other artists who spawned slavish imitators, Poussin's influence seems to have been wholly positive. Other artists understood his balance between ideal and reality. His influence can be seen in the work of French landscape painters such as Bourdon
Sébastien Bourdon
Sébastien Bourdon was a French painter and engraver. His chef d'œuvre is The Crucifixion of St. Peter made for the cathedral of Notre Dame....
, Gaspard Dughet
Gaspard Dughet
Gaspard Dughet , also known as Gaspard Poussin, was a French painter born in Rome.A pupil of Nicolas Poussin, Gaspard Dughet was the brother of Poussin's wife...
, Millet
Millet
The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a taxonomic group, but rather a functional or agronomic one. Their essential similarities are that they are small-seeded grasses grown in difficult...
, Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century...
, Pissarro and Cézanne. Although the critic William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
recognized Poussin as a great painter, the English school largely preferred the gently poetic landscapes of Claude to the intellectual rigour of Poussin. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
, although influenced by The Deluge, had strong reservations; Constable
Constable
A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions.-Etymology:...
was one of the few to learn from Poussin, whose paintings he liked to copy.
The Deluge
Although Poussin is primarily regarded as one of the greatest classicist painters, his Deluge created for him a unique position in the history of romantic painting. The Deluge was the prototype and inspiration for a large number of nineteenth century deluges and tempests. It became known as one of the first masterpieces of the "horrific sublime" and acquired a unique importance in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
for romantic landscape painters. Almost all French critics and historians of art commented on it, many hailing it as the greatest painting of all time. In England Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
described it as "perhaps the finest historical landscape in the world" and Constable
Constable
A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions.-Etymology:...
considered it "alone in the world".
Very soon after it was first exhibited, the Académie Royale exceptionally devoted a short conférence to it in 1668, with an unprecedented five subsequent discussions between 1694 and 1736, indicating the unique impression it had made in France. These early appraisals recognized the daring originality of the picture, giving it a special place of honour amongst Poussin's oeuvre. While recognizing the harmony of the picture and its economical monochromaticism, the academicians nevertheless felt that the inherent greyness of the subject matter did not give scope for objets agréables.
In 1750 the Deluge was included in an exhibition of the paintings of Louis XV in the Luxembourg Palace
Luxembourg Palace
The Luxembourg Palace in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, north of the Luxembourg Garden , is the seat of the French Senate.The formal Luxembourg Garden presents a 25-hectare green parterre of gravel and lawn populated with statues and provided with large basins of water where children sail model...
. At the time its popularity with the public eclipsed the Marie de' Medici cycle
Marie de' Medici cycle
The Marie de' Medici Cycle is a series of twenty-four paintings by Peter Paul Rubens commissioned by Marie de' Medici, wife of Henry IV of France, for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. Rubens received the commission in the autumn of 1621...
of Rubens
Rubens
Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...
, on display for the first time; this included well-known visitors such as Charles-Antoine Coypel
Charles-Antoine Coypel
Charles-Antoine Coypel was a French painter, art commentator, and playwright. He lived in Paris. He was the son of the artist Antoine Coypel and grandson of Noël Coypel. Charles-Antoine inherited his father’s design and painting duties as premier peintre du roi at the French court when his father...
, James Barry
James Barry
James Barry may refer to:*James Barry, 1st Baron Barry of Santry *James Barry *James Barry *James Barry *James Barry...
and Horace Walpole, who in particular singled out the Deluge as "worth going to see alone" and "the first picture of its kind in the world". It was, however, the commentary of the Abbé Louis Gougenot at the time that captured the four aspects of the painting that would be the main points of all future discussion:
- Economy of means. One significant feature that distinguished the Deluge from the Deluges of RaphaelRaphaelRaffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
and MichelangeloMichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
was the small number of figures in the painting – eleven including a horse. Several writers including Coypel and Diderot thought there were even fewer. Poussin was perceived to have deliberately chosen to depict "le moment solennel où la race humaine va disparaître". Early critics, including Chateaubriand, regarded this essay in horror and pathos as Poussin's swansongSwansongSwansong is the final studio album by the British extreme metal band Carcass. It was released on June 10, 1996 in the UK by Earache Records. It is the only album to feature guitarist Carlo Regadas...
. Later the historical painter Pierre-Nolasque BergeretPierre-Nolasque BergeretPierre-Nolasque Bergeret was a French painter, pioneer lithographer and designer who studied with Jacques-Louis David....
included it symbolically in his depiction of Poussin's death. Critics also noted Poussin's understatement: according to Diderot and de ClaracCharles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste de ClaracCharles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste, Comte de Clarac was a French artist, scholar and archaeologist.-Life:Emigrating on the Revolution, he travelled round Europe, finding success in drawing and archaeology. He became tutor to the children of Joachim Murat, king of Naples, and was charged by...
, the calmness of the picture only intensified the horror. Constable, who picked out the Deluge as one of the four paintings marking "the memorable points in the history of landscape", considered that this calmness showed Poussin's faithfullness to the original biblical text, which only mentions rain; for him Poussin had eschewed all violent and dramatic effects, thereby deepening the interest in those few figures present.
- Richness of interest. Although lacking in principal figures, the Deluge was considered to evoke in the observer all the ideas connected with a disaster – destruction, desolation, fear, horror and melancholy. Critics singled out the old man clinging to a plank, the pathos of the family group desperately trying to rescue their child and, most sinister of all, the serpent gliding over the rocks on the right. RousseauJean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
was among those whose imagination was haunted by the serpent, the precursor of evil. The nightmarish image of the serpent – l'esprit tentateur qui corrompit le premier homme, et qui s'applaudit encore du nouveau désastre dont il est l'auteur – became one of the most copied motifs of Poussin.
- Sublimity of conception. For many critics, Poussin's boldness in daring to break all the usual rules of painting showed that he was attempting to speak the unspeakable; that he was willing "to hurl himself into the depths to make tangible an inaccessible truth." With this recognition of visionary recklessness, considered by some to contradict his usual rational methods, came also an appreciation of the ineffable sublimity of the Deluge, both for its terror and its simplicity. Like others before him, Shelley was transfixed by the painting, which he found "terribly impressive". Many commentators have ascribed the visceral and overwhelming reaction created by the Deluge, so hard to translate into words, to Poussin's genius in evoking the sublime.
- Appropriateness of colour. Already in the seventeenth century, academicians had praised the Deluge for its "universal colour". In 1750 the Abbé Gougenot had similarly referred to the appropriateness of grey as a colour. It was Coypel, however, who understood that it was a colour designed to evoke a mood of melancholy. Later this was understood to be a supreme example of Poussin's theory of modes. This ran contrary to the usual academic theories demanding vivid contrasts in a work of art. On the contrary as the English critic John OpieJohn OpieJohn Opie was an English historical and portrait painter. He painted many great men and women of his day, most notably in the artistic and literary professions.-Life and work:...
pointed out in 1809, the colourlessness of the Deluge was one of the main factors for the "pathetic solemnity, grandeur and simplicity of its effect". Poussin's use of colour did not please all, notably the English critic John RuskinJohn RuskinJohn Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, who found the treatment of the theme undramatic and unnaturalistic. Much later at the turn of the twentieth century the French art historian Paul DesjardinsPaul DesjardinsPaul Desjardins is a former all-star professional Canadian football offensive lineman who played nine seasons in the Canadian Football League.-External links:*...
, one of the greatest scholars of Poussin, interpreted the Deluge not as an evocation of rain or flooding but of doom and despair. Rather than realism, he saw the whole painting as an expression of a human state, a prayer uttered into the void never to be answered. With this interpretation, the greyness of the picture became moving in itself, the symbol for a lost soul. Moreover the cycle of four paintings could thrn be seen to have a unity as four moods or musical modes, reflected in the different colourings of the paintings: lush greens for Spring; golden yellows for Summer; fading browns for Autumn; and ashen grey for Winter.
The Deluge inspired many similar paintings by later artists. It was widely distributed as an engraving and numerous artists made copies of the original, including Peyron
Jean-François Pierre Peyron
Jean-François Pierre Peyron, full name of Pierre Peyron was a French neoclassical painter.-Biography:In his native city of Aix he studied art under Claude Arnulphy...
, Géricault, Etty
William Etty
William Etty was an English painter, best known for his paintings of nudes.-Beginnings:In accordance with the wishes of his father, Etty served seven years of apprenticeship to a printer in Hull...
, Danby
Francis Danby
Francis Danby was an Irish painter of the Romantic era. His imaginative, dramatic landscapes were comparable to those of John Martin. Danby initially developed his imaginative style while he was the central figure in a group of artists who have come to be known as the Bristol School...
and Degas. Apocalyptic paintings became popular in France in the second half of the eighteenth century and the Deluge was a theme for the Prix de Rome
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
in sculpture in 1780. Many of the subsequent monumental Deluges owe some kind of debt to Poussin's understated original. These include works by Géricault, Regnault
Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Jean-Baptiste Regnault was a French painter.Regnault was born in Paris, and began life at sea in a merchant vessel. At the age of fifteen his talent attracted attention, and he was sent to Italy by M. de Monval under the care of Bardin...
and Girodet. Across the channel the first major painter to produce an English Deluge was
Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
. Seeing the original in 1802 marked a turning-point in his career. Fascinated by the picture, particularly its "sublime" colour, he was nevertheless critical of its composition and found it too restrained and undramatic. His own reworking is more dramatic, but, along with other later variations on the same theme, still owes much to Poussin's original. Later English deluges by John Martin
John Martin (painter)
John Martin was an English Romantic painter, engraver and illustrator.-Biography:Martin was born in July 1789, in a one-room family cottage, at Haydon Bridge, near Hexham in Northumberland, the 4th son of Fenwick Martin, a one time fencing master...
and Francis Danby
Francis Danby
Francis Danby was an Irish painter of the Romantic era. His imaginative, dramatic landscapes were comparable to those of John Martin. Danby initially developed his imaginative style while he was the central figure in a group of artists who have come to be known as the Bristol School...
were less influenced by the original in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
and were often a conscious reaction to its understatement and calmness. Later Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
dismissed Poussin's Deluge, directing his readers instead to Turner's version, with no mention of Turner's indebtedness to Poussin.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century the Deluge has remained popular, still retaining its modernity as a piece of universal, even abstract, art. As has wryly commented, it is the only painting by Poussin which "would retain much of its attraction for the lover of modern art even if it were inadvertently hung upside down".
External links
- Atlas catalogue, Room 16 in the LouvreLouvreThe Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...