Nicolas Poussin

NICOLAS POUSSIN, (Les Andelys, Normandy, 1594 - Rome, 1665).
"Jupiter fed by the corybantes", ca. 1650 - 1683.
Etching on paper.
Signed and titled in plate.
Measurements: 30 x 40 cm, 37 x 47 cm (frame).

Poussin is the most important painter of the French 17th century and the fundamental master of classicism. He was trained in his region of birth with a late-mannerist author and later in Paris. Thanks to his friendship with the poet Giambattista Marino, he traveled to the Italic peninsula and was introduced to the most advanced Roman intellectual circles, while meeting the patrons and protectors of the arts in the Eternal City, where he settled. Poussin's success lies in the rejection of Caravaggism, which was beginning to go out of fashion, and in the adoption of the great examples of the Renaissance, modernized in a tempered baroque classicist sense. An admirer of Giulio Romano, and above all of Raphael, he devoted himself to a pure classicism influenced by Domenichino and by other painters of similar spirit; thus he soon possessed a personal artistic expression, born from the knowledge of classical antiquity - he studied texts, sculptures, bas-reliefs and architectural remains -, and from the profound observation of nature. His style became surrounded by a scholarly aura of Greco-Latin origin and his scenes began to appear composed with restraint and balance. Towards 1630 the Venetian influence that reached the authors of the Roman environment, enriched the intellectualized aesthetics of the painter revitalizing his experiences by means of the color. Throughout his life he executed both allegorical, mythological or historical scenes, destined to a chosen and cultured clientele of educated people, and religious paintings, endowed with solemn monumentality, although often cold. Apart from these themes, he devoted himself extensively to landscape, sometimes as a background for his compositions, and sometimes as the real protagonist; his panoramas, very beautiful, are of an admirable logical construction, serene or tempestuous, but with an air of conscious timelessness. Poussin is the prototype of the philosopher artist, concerned with the expression of his art, which he endowed with a sober moral content. Each of his works symbolizes a human action that conveys a message of remarkable spiritual depth. His ideas are independent of chance and his compositions are thought out down to the smallest details. He always lived in Rome, except for a brief interlude in Paris, between 1640 and 1642. The Prado Museum has a set of masterpieces by his hand of great importance and also some of certain collaborators, followers and imitators well identified (Luna, J. J.: From Titian to Goya. Great masters of the Prado Museum, National Art Museum of China-Shanghai Museum, 2007, pp. 300-301).