Poussin Connoisseurship Project

7. The Flight into Egypt.

The Flight into Egypt.

Oil on Canvas, 95 x 127.5 cm, possibly 1629-30.

WORCESTER, (Massachusetts), Art Museum.

Provenance.

First recorded in 1825, in the collection of the Reverend Heneage Finch, probably in England; after Heneage’s death in 1865, passed by descent to Col. J. C. Wynne- Finch; sold at Sotheby’s, London 4/7/1956, lot. 142; bt. Armitage; anon. sale, Sotheby, London, 20/11/1957, lot. 111, bt. by the Vermeer scholar Lawrence Gowing; subsequently acq by the museum- date unknown, but presumably after the owner’s death in 1991.

Related Works.

Drawings

Copy, unknown artist. Private Collection, Paris, pen in brown on yellow washed paper, 145 x 170 mm. This drawing was considered by Friedlaender and Blunt to be a copy of the preparatory drawing for the Worcester Flight. It was subsequently reproduced in Blunt’s monograph, and then exhibited as a copy by Oberhuber at Fort Worth in 1988 (D 162). In 1966, Blunt stated that the style was “in the manner that [Poussin] used in about the years 1626-28”. In actual fact the crudity of this drawing (commas for eyes, bold schematic outlines for the contours of the figures) corresponds more to the earlier Marino drawings when Poussin was finding his feet as a draughtsman back in 1625-6.  Stephen Conrad tells me that Prat and Rosenberg in their 1994 CR of the drawings ( R 976) relate "the drawing to a painting accepted by Blunt but justly rejected by Thuillier and Rosenberg, as its style forbids its retention in the corpus." Needless to say I don't agree with this rejection., nor does SC. See Stephen's full comments below on this issue with particular reference to Mahon's thought on the baroque in Poussin..

Copy, Michel Corneille II (1642-1708), Paris, Museé du Louvre, brown ink, brown wash, traces of chalk, 145 x 181 m. 

Oberhuber reported that Rosenberg knew of this drawing, which by the miracle of technology you can visit virtually here. Given the closeness of this drawing to the more well-known one, it’s to be wondered if Corneille was also copying a compositional drawing. If this is true, then it may offer clues about Poussin’s original intentions. In both drawings, the buildings and edifices are eliminated, with only large trees behind the main group. The Holy Family moves through countryside instead of leaving what looks like the outskirts of a hamlet in the painting. Was this Poussin’s first thought for the painting, and the walls were added in the final version, possibly inspired by the Nancy Christ Entering Jerusalem which as Blunt noted has similar buildings? The most significant omission in both of these drawings is the two angels hovering above the fleeing family. It is probably the case that if the original drawing surfaced, we would find little difference between it and these two sheets, which suggests that the picture was initially conceived without the iconographical complexity of the final picture. It seems to be the case that we’re dealing with copies after Poussin’s original drawings for the Worcester canvas. It would be interesting to see what Rosenberg and Prat have to say about the Corneille copy, especially as Rosenberg believed that the Flight was a pastiche.

Copy, attributed to Sébastien Bourdon, in Sotheby sale of 21 March 1988. Thanks again to SC. for this information.

 Engravings.

None known.

Description and Iconography.

Christ and his parents, Mary and Joseph, flee to Egypt to escape the persecution of Herod. In this painting, no less than four angels are shown: one large winged one who walks before the donkey bearing Mary and Christ; two conversing with each other that fly above the first; and a putto with small wings who hovers around the Madonna’s head. The first who spurs the Holy Family away from the danger that Joseph seems to be gazing back at may be the angel who warned Joseph of the wrath of Herod, whilst the other airborne angels partly shrouded in cloud could represent the other two dreams that Joseph received: one to announce Mary’s virginity; the other to proclaim the Holy Family’s return from Egypt, although that interpretation wouldn’t have an exact fit here. I think that we can be more confident about the small putto who flies behind the head of the Virgin Mary; this figure surely symbolises the Holy Innocents from whose slaughter Joseph and his family are fleeing. As the infants were the very first martyrs to die for Christ, and Mary represented Ecclesia, the Church, it is fitting that this putto should accompany the Virgin, and give the impression that it is about to crown her as Ecclesia, for whom it has died. Note also that the infant wears a crown of flowers and ancient writers like Prudentius compared their massacre to petals in a storm.

It may also be significant that the Worcester Flight into Egypt shows ambivalence on the compositional level: Joseph, Mary and the leading angel glance back, a check to their rightward advance. By introducing this collective backward glance, both a compositional and psychological counter-movement, the spectator is immediately reminded of the threat from which the Holy Family are fleeing.  Indeed, it would not be difficult to imagine a painting of the massacre of the innocents hanging on the left next to this version of the Worcester Flight into Egypt. Yet, perhaps to think in terms of pendants for the massacre and the flight in the seventeenth-century is misleading because study of these two subjects in this period suggests that there was an increasing tendency for the two themes to overlap, with the result that each theme became embedded within the other, thus eradicating the need to cross-reference between the two subjects on separate canvases.

Technical Notes and Connoisseurship Issues.

(a)   Stylistic Analysis.

This picture was examined by PCP a long time ago, in 2007, in the Worcester museum. My recollection is that the picture did seem to be summarily painted, i.e. painted sketchily, and that it may be unfinished. The notion of summary execution of this painting first appeared in Badt in 1969, who remarked on the Flight’s unfinished quality. Mining the same strand, Konrad Oberhuber in his Fort Worth exhibition of 1988, advanced the view that Poussin had deliberately painted the picture in this hurried way to emphasise the speed of the Holy Family fleeing across the picture.

“It was painted at the time of the Vièrge au pilier in a manner so free and sketchy that it is generally regarded as unfinished. Yet we wonder wether Poussin had a special purpose in mind here, that of describing speed. The composition is built up from the horizon line of the forward-moving donkey and the oblique parallels formed by the bending bodies of angel, Virgin, and St Joseph striding and riding at their quickest. Draperies float along and support their movement, and their faces are turned back in concern, letting us experience the danger from which they escape and their need for haste. As they lightly pass by in bright and flashing colours, receding into space ever so slightly, we know that in spite of the humble setting the event is a matter of the highest importance.”

This is an ingenious suggestion, but there is no way of proving Oberhuber’s hypothesis, Are we dealing here with a pastiche, a thought that Rosenberg entertained in 1982, or was this picture uncharacteristically rushed by a painter who is noted for his meticulous, plodding style?  There are some worrying aspects; the doll-like, un-modelled face of the Madonna. Compare it with the fully realized classical profile of the Virgin in the St Catherine, examined in the previous entry, and very close stylistically to the Worcester canvas. During my inspection of the picture in 2007 another scholar who joined me expressed doubts about the attribution, though mercifully he refrained from assigning it to Mellin, the pis aller of Poussin connoisseurship, as noted in last post.

Perhaps the problem of the sketchy style can be explained in terms of the paragone, a hangover from the renaissance where the merits of painting were compared with sculpture. My train of thought owes much to the late Sir Denis Mahon who inspected the picture when it was shown in Blunt’s 1960 exhibition in the Louvre.

“In the next stage (which would be during 1627) we find Poussin veering more definitely towards a baroque point of view in which Colore predominates over Disegno. But he has not yet grasped the full possibilities of baroque composition. Professor Gowing’s Flight into Egypt (E 10) is organised more or less in one plane like a bas relief, but in every other respect is committed to Colore.”

I tend to agree with Mahon about the dialogue between colour and the more sculptural aspects of this picture, although his dating seems three or four years too early for me- see below. With its strict articulation of figures, and the confinement of the figures to one plane, Poussin does successfully produce painted relief, something he did in a work from the same period- the Return from the Flight into Egypt (Cleveland), although this work inclines more towards the baroque with its swirling clouds of angels and dramatic cross in the sky. Yet colour is pronounced in the Worcester picture: blue and vermilion for the Madonna; scintillating golden yellow for the garment of the leading angel. Perhaps the “hurried” look of the picture owes something to a trade-off between sculptural painting and the colore that Poussin learnt from the Venetians, either from their paintings in Rome, or painters in that city- like Lanfranco- who favoured this open brush style.

 (b)   Dating.

The earliest date suggested for this painting was 1627, by Blunt and Mahon. In the case of Blunt, this dating partly rested on the style of the “compositional drawing” known from copies whose artistic character was consistent with Poussin’s early period, as he noted in his catalogue of drawings prepared with Friedlaender. However, the crudities of the drawing- assuming that the two drawings faithfully render them, which seems likely as they are both very similar, are not present in the final painting. Possibly the drawing problem could be resolved if we agreed that Poussin left the original composition alone and returned to it two or three years later when he came to work on the Worcester painting. There is also the possibility that another preparatory sheet did exist for the painting with a more sophisticated manner of drawing than the one known through copies.

Mahon approached the problem of dating through traditional connoisseurship, deducing date on the basis of a comparative analysis between the Worcester painting and others,  though he concurred with Blunt’s date of 1627. As noted by Blunt in 1960, the wall in the Worcester canvas resembles the buildings found in the Christ Entering Jerusalem at Nancy, which as noted above has the same colour scheme. We encounter a problem here though; the Nancy painting is in a very bad condition which has led to doubts about the attribution, with Mellin raising his head yet again. Christopher Wright dismissed Mellin’s involvement and proposed a solution: Poussin abandoned the picture half-completed. Given that the Worcester picture seems incomplete too; could there have been some kind of crisis in Poussin’s workshop at the time these pictures were painted? As for the Nancy de-attribution, it’s worth pointing out that the motif of the putti holding the cross in the sky appears again in uncontested works like the Dulwich Flight into Egypt and the Cleveland Return of the Flight into Egypt.  Blunt (1960) also observed that Saint Joseph in the Massachusetts picture was painted after the same model for a figure in the Louvre Virgin of the Pillar.  I would also add that the turn of the head of the acolyte with his hands clasped together in the Virgin picture echoes the leading angel in the Flight; they both have the same diagonal tilt of the head upwards. Given such close figurative correspondences, I think it is reasonable to move the Worcester painting up to at least 1629, the earliest date for the Louvre Virgin of the Pillar. Supporting this date, it should also be noted that the Madonna in the Flight is very similar to the one in the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh c.1629) it can therefore be assumed that the Worcester picture is almost contemporary with the both the Edinburgh St Catherine and the Louvre Virgin of the Pillar. Finally, though Wright wanted to move the Flight into the early 1630s, I think a date close to the end of the decade is the better option.

Conclusion.

Despite the summary treatment of this picture, and taking into account the existence of copies which show a underdeveloped treatment of the subject, PCP proposes that we are dealing here with a genuine picture painted by Poussin about 1629-30. There are too many similarities between motifs in this picture and other works done at this time. I have never really understood claims for taking it away from Poussin; or indeed the Nancy picture, which it so closely resembles in colour and tone. Doubters should also acknowledge that the treatment of the Flight is thorougly original- and only a painter of Poussin's invention could have even begun to conceive such a picture that marries poised classical relief with painterly exuberance.

Attribution Views

Blunt, 1966 + (1627)

Wild, 1966 - (Charles Mellin).

Badt, 1969 + (summary style)

Blunt, 1974 +

Thuillier, 1974 - (though not by Mellin).

Wild, 1980 – (Charles Mellin).

Rosenberg, 1982, - (a pastiche?)

Wright, 1984, + (early 1630s).

PCP, 2007 + (1629-30, after viewing the picture; noted the summary style).

PCP, 2012 +, (1629-30).

Relevant Literature.

Catalogues

Anthony Blunt, Exposition Nicolas Poussin, (Museé du Louvre), 1960, no. 10.

Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, (London,1966), no. 60.

Walter Friedlaender and Anthony Blunt, The Drawings of Nicolas Poussin: Catalogue Raisonne, (5 vols), (London, 1937-75), Paris drawing, listed as copy after a compositional drawing, V, A169.

Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin: The Early Years in Rome, (Fort Worth, 1988), no. 73; no. D163 (Paris drawing, here listed as copy).

L.A. Prat and Pierre Rosenberg, Nicolas Poussin 1594-1665,Catalogue raisonné des dessins, , 2 vols, Milan, [1994), R 976.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London, 1984), no. 69.

Other Literature.

Kurt Badt, Die Kunst des Nicolas Poussin, (Cologne, 1969), 88..

Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (Washington, 1967, rep, London, 1995), 75.

Denis Mahon, “Poussin’s Early Development: An Alternative Hypothesis,” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 102, No. 688, 288-327. 

David Packwood, unpublished PhD dissertation, Theological and Philosophical Themes in Poussin’s Art, (University of Birmingham, 2005, 59-61.

 

6. Mystic Marriage of St Catherine.

The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine.

Oil on Wood,126 x 168 cm, possibly 1629-30.

EDINBURGH, National Gallery of Scotland.

Provenance.

Believed to have been painted for Poussin’s most famous patron, Cassiano dal Pozzo. It was Haskell and Rinehart who first published this picture and the inventory where it appears as La S. Caterina V.M. da 7 e 5 di Pussino in Tavola. In a later article, Standring (1988), mentioned a legal declaration of 22^nd July 1731 that records, that in 1730, certi inglesi in Florence had made a contract with Cosimo Antonio to buy four paintings by Poussin then held in Rome by the Marchese Ginnetti Lancellotti. These were the Venus and Mars (Boston), Landscape with a Storm with Pyramus and Thisbe (Frankfurt), a Nude Venus with Putti (whereabouts unknown, although several contenders for this) and the Edinburgh Marriage of St Catherine.

 In 1781, the picture belonged to Humphrey Morice at Chiswick; bt by Lord Ashburnham in 1786; Ashburnham Sale Christie’s London, 20^th July, 1850, lot 9; Samuel Woodburn Sale, Christie’s, London, 24^th June, 1853, lot 72, bt. by Pearce (no size given but description fits Edinburgh painting). The Woodburn Picture is said in the catalogue to come from the Montcalm Gallery, but no such picture appears in the Montcalm Sale; perhaps anon. sale, Philips, London, 3^rd June, 1856, lot 61;  T Kibble sale, Christie’s London, 5^th June, 1886, lot 93, (as from the Ashburnham Coll), bt Lesser, Sir Herbert Cook; by descent to Sir Francis Cook; bt. from him by Agnew’s in 1946, and from them to Sir John Heathcote Armory of Devon who bequeathed it to the National Gallery of Scotland, which acquired it in 1973.

Related Works.

Drawings

There is a drawing by an imitator- probably 17^th century- of Poussin in the Cleveland Museum of Fine Arts, -brown and grey wash, 288 x 389 mm. Interestingly, this shows a different composition; we see a landscape containing a scene of the saint being beheaded, behind the main group. Though the tentative style and clumsy technique disqualify it as autograph, could this be a copy of the original design for the Edinburgh St Catherine? If so, this might indicate Poussin’s wish to eliminate violent aspects of the story and subtly suggest the execution by the device of the angel running its fingers over the sharp blade in the finished version. Also, Oberhuber speculated that Poussin wasn’t interested in perspective in this period; instead, he preferred to show the Holy Family and Saints against ruined temples, which might be symbols of salvation. This is a tempting hypothesis, but it could equally be the case that the variant graphic composition is the product of an awkward concoction of Poussin’s painting and various examples of the subject which show the martyrdom in the background, like Correggio’s for instance.

Engravings.

None.

 Description and Theme

In Western art the vision of Saint Catherine of Alexandria usually shows the Infant Christ, held by the Virgin, placing a ring (one of her attributes) on her finger, following some literary accounts, although in the version in the Golden Legend he appears to be adult, and the marriage takes place among a great crowd of angels and "all the celestial court", - and this seems to be closer to Poussin's version.This subject is found in Italian painting from the 14^th century onwards. According to a source earlier than the Golden Legend, Catherine of Alexandria’s mentor, a hermit, gave her an image of the Virgin and Child. The saint’s prayers caused Christ to turn his face towards her, and later when her faith had strengthened, to place a ring upon her finger. 

 Technical Notes and Connoisseurship Issues.

(a)   The support.

Quoting from the Edinburgh 1981 exhibition. “ Painted on five oak planks lying horizontally (considerable paint losses along the joins of the planks, especially the topmost joint). The whole panel appears to have been sawn through 42 cm from the right-hand edge, and joined together again.” Anybody approaching the problem of who painted this picture has to contend with one fact: this picture is painted on panel; none of Poussin’s other pictures use wood as a support. This has inevitably led to doubts being cast on the attribution, and frankly there seems no satisfactory explanation for this anomaly, unless we put it down to the whims of the patron, Cassiano dal Pozzo? Anomalies are not absent from Poussin’s corpus though. For example, there are a group of drawings executed in red chalk, a technique that is unusual in his work. And some scholars would completely reject all chalk drawings from Poussin’s oeuvre on the grounds that he was not suited to the medium and was more comfortable with pen and wash, at which he excelled.

 

The St Catherine has been X-rayed- reproduction here- and this does show alterations from the existing painting. It seems logical to think that this painted over scheme was the original design; large, looming forms suggest hills and mountains in the background. Could this relate to the Cleveland drawing which shows the saint in a landscape? Is the Cleveland sheet a weak copy of another drawing that contained the original thought for Poussin’s St Catherine? Oberhuber believed that the Cleveland sheet was a copy after a lost modello, or presentation drawing, for the Edinburgh picture. PCP wouldn’t rule out the drawing as reflecting Poussin’s own design: the aperture on the right which opens up the eye to the distance is something found in other pictures of the late 1620s, g. the Midas and Bacchus (Munich).

However, this picture isn’t without its own problems and it will have to go on PCP’s list of works to be considered. 

  (b)   Stylistic Analysis.

 In working out Poussin’s stylistic development Blunt identified a group of pictures which he said were “Poussin’s most important series of works in the last years of the 1620s.” These included the present Edinburgh picture, the large altarpiece of St Erasmus (Vatican, 1629-30), as well as the study for it at Ottawa, the Virgin appearing to St James (Louvre,1629-30), the Massacre of the Innocents (Museé Condé, Chantilly, c. 1629), the Exposing of Moses (Dresden, c. 1627-8) and the Inspiration of the Epic Poet (Louvre,1630-1). To these Blunt added the fragment of the lost Golden Calf (Private Coll, on loan to Dulwich), examined in the last post. In assessing the qualities of these pictures Blunt discerned several characteristics which I’ll list here. “Broad, luminous treatment of the forms…bathed and modelled in light in the manner of Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love- detail shown here ; light, rather blonde colour key with tones recalling Veronese as much as Titian; repeated use of certain types, particularly the young women;  free creamy handling of the paint;  certain unusual devices in the painting of eyes and ears”. I feel that Blunt was on the right track when he detected the influence of Titian in the practice of “painting the eyebrows with a single curved stroke” though the “touching in of the eyelashes line by line- almost impossible to show here- was Poussin’s own invention. Poussin’s Madonna is the result of his aim to reinvent Titian’s feminine beauty within his own vision of classical grace, a tendency which can be seen the Golden Calf fragment, which though not by his hand contains similar young women as those in the St Catherine. Blunt called the style in the fragment "classical", (maybe he meant Hellenistic?);  and there does seem to be in both the fragment and the Catherine Madonna an attempt to create an antique profile, though via the colourism of Titian.  

 St Catherine herself shows knowledge of Venetian colours, the olive green and wine colours typical of Veronese as Blunt observed. Adding my own contributions to this connoisseurial analysis, I’d say that the pointed top of the saint’s headdress is a stylistic feature found in the work of Giovanni Bellini and Alvise Vivarini, which if true would suggest an even broader knowledge of Venetian art. Whoever painted this picture had thoroughly assimilated the art of that northern city.

 I’d also add physiognomic characteristics of the Edinburgh Madonna such as a big toe drawn smaller than the others, present in works from this period: for example the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (New York, c. 1628-9) .  There are stylistic affinities with other pictures in this period of 1628-1630.The combination of red and blue infused with highlights  can be found in pictures ranging from the Death of Germanicus (Minneapolis, 1628) right up to the Flight into Egypt (Worcester, Mass, c. 1629-30.) These cross- references can be multiplied and linked to other paintings like the Triumph of David (Madrid, c. 1629-30). The angel fingering the sword seems similar to the David in the Triumph; and the sword in the Edinburgh St Catherine has close affinity with the weapon in the Prado picture. If we decide that Poussin didn’t paint this picture, then we have to assume that its author was thoroughly familiar with Poussin’s art. May I introduce a candidate, Charles Mellin?

 (c)    The Mellin Factor.

 There is a joke amongst Poussin scholars that Mellin is Poussin’s waste paper basket. In other words, a sub-standard Poussin is likely to be an imitation by Mellin, especially in this period. The first serious advocate of Mellin’s authorship of some of Poussin’s paintings, including the St Catherine, was Doris Wild. She considered the Edinburgh work “Mellin’s masterpiece” an opinion that would be shared by very few Poussin scholars today despite the doubts about attribution hovering over this picture.  Wild became obsessed with the idea of re-assigning some of Poussin’s paintings to Mellin, a practice that some French curators have upheld, though this trend seems to be on the wane- see below. But as Christopher Wright has pointed out this group of “Mellin pictures” is too “incoherent”. And once we continue down this road re-attributing Poussin to Mellin, where do we stop? In addition to taking away the St Catherine from him should we continue and reject the New York Rest on the Flight, the Worcester Flight into Egypt, the Prado St Cecilia. I’ll return to these pictures and this problem in other posts.

 Blunt dismissed Mellin as an exponent of the “semi-baroque”, and while Mellin has taken a beating next to Poussin, he’s always been feted by his native Frenchmen. There was a major exhibition of the painter at Nancy in 2007. Here’s an appropriate quote from Didier Rykner’s review.

 Mellin has often been compared unfavourably, and unfairly, to Nicolas Poussin. Although lacking his genius, Mellin is an excellent painter whose style has nothing to do with Poussin’s. The misunderstanding, as underlined by Philippe Malgouyres, author of the catalogue and in charge of the exhibition, stems from the art historian Doris Wild who, while being a major contributor to his rediscovery, committed a serious misinterpretation in qualifying him as a less talented imitator of Poussin.

 I’ll have to come back to Mellin when I examine Poussin’s Flights into Egypt where the latter’s influence on the former is most evident. Blunt’s “semi-baroque” label is interesting though because it suggests a painter with just a foothold in the baroque style. Poussin was similar, but of course he was a much more competent painter able to fuse the language of the baroque with classical idioms briefly before he moved on to his fully fledged high classicism of the 1630s, which really begins with the canonical Inspiration of the Epic Poet.   One of the best examples of this hybrid style can be seen in the Virgin appearing to St James- click back to this post for a reproduction of fit.

 (d)   Dating.

 Blunt’s 1627 is too early for the picture, and even his revised date of 1628 seems to raise problems. At the other end of the scale, Denis Mahon’s 1631-33 seems too late. As Mahon put it in a Burlington article of 1960 where he took issue with Blunt connecting the Two Heads fragment with the Marriage of St Catherine.

  “These two heads appear to me to be close in handling to the St Erasmus. Blunt has characterized the fragment as rather 'classical'; I must confess I cannot quite see this, though I would agree (and this is a two-edged argument!) that it is difficult to assess the 'degree of classicality' without knowledge of the composition as a whole. The head on the left seems to me to have a similar relationship to the analogous head in the San Francisco Golden Calf (Colloque, Fig. 148) as the kneeling man in the Madone du Pilier has to the analogous figure in the San Francisco picture. Motives first tried out in the latter are now treated in a much broader and more mature way; in fact, the comparison militates against, rather than in favour of, the contemporaneity of the San Francisco picture (and thus against its alleged date of 1629). On the other hand, I am afraid I cannot agree with Blunt's association (Colloque,i, pp. 166 f.) of these two heads with passages in the Marriage of St Catherine(F ig.36) formerly in the Cook Collection. The handling of the two heads (Colloque, Fig. 26), the St Erasmus, and the Madonna du Pilier (cf. Colloque, Figs. 147, 205, and 224) all seem to me to be heavier and more forceful than that of the St Catherine. In fact, I can see delicate nuances beginning to appear in the St Catherine which to me clearly indicate a rather later date (1631)..”

  Two years after this article, and in response to Blunt’s 1960 exhibition, Mahon would push the date of the Catherine further back to 1633. Leaving aside the question of what Mahon meant by “delicate nuances” in 1960, I simply can’t place the picture as late as 1633, or even 1631; its monumental figures and grandeur accords more with works of 1629-30, particularly the Martyrdom of St Erasmus. The fluted columns appear in pictures of this period, including autograph paintings that contain similarities with the St Catherine. Similar architecture appears in the Prado Triumph of David (above) and St Cecila, the Washington Assumption of the Virgin, and a dubious Holy Family (Moscow).Mahon himself also drew attention to the similarity between the painting of the drapery in the St Catherine and the gown hung over the tomb in the Washington Assumption Even if Poussin’s authorship of the St Catherine is doubted, the work boasts great stylistic affinity with many pictures of this year 1629-30, some of which have undisputed autograph status. A date of between 1629- 1630 seems therefore advisable.

Additional Notes.

 I suppose you’re wondering where PCP stands on the attribution? Well, I have to say that even taking into account the problems, notably the support, and certain incongruities like the colour of the saint, I’m still inclined to believe that I am in the presence of a work painted by Poussin’s own hand. I completely reject the Charles Mellin hypothesis, though I needn’t worry too much about this as it doesn’t have many adherents these days. The practice now is to separate Mellin from Poussin, and link him with other French artists such as Simon Vouet, about as far from Poussin as you can get. This obviously works to the attribution’s advantage; once you take Mellin out of the equation, what other candidate can be put forward? But what really clinches it for me is the angel on the right holding the sword. The atmosphere here is very introverted and melancholy, very close to the mood of the Prado Triumph of David which is one of the most sombre canvases that Poussin ever did. The pensive bearer of the sword contrasts markedly with the light, joyous feel of the women and Christ child to the right; there’s also the correspondence in type; the angel and David have similar facial characteristics. Also, the left leg of the angel is bent back, a pose that is present in the Prado Triumph of David. It’s intriguing to speculate which was painted first. I would have to say that they may have been painted at the same time. Poussin made some modifications though; the model for the seated David seems to be the sculpture known as the Ludovisi Mars, whereas there seems to be no specific source for St Catherine’s angel. It’s not at all surprising that some scholars, e.g. Wright, have stressed the stylistic affinities between these two paintings. Both pictures were cleaned in 1981 and this brought out the similarities in colour between them, another point of convergence.

 There remains the problem of the oak panels, but that that’s always going to be a stumbling block to the attribution. Sure it’s unusual, if not singular, but unless more archival evidence emerges that might help us understand the choice of support, there’s nothing we can do. And unless somebody advances very strong reasons for taking the picture away from Poussin, then I think the attribution should stan.

 

Attribution Views

Blunt, 1966 + (1627-29)

Wild, 1966 - (Charles Mellin).

Brejon de Lavergnée, 1973 + 

Edinburgh, 1973 +

Blunt, 1974 + (1627-29).

Thuillier, 1974 - (Wild’s att to Mellin to be taken seriously).

Wild, 1980 – (Charles Mellin).

Edinburgh, 1981 exh, Brigstocke et al + (1629).

Wright, 1984, + (c. 1630)

PCP, 2012 +, 1629-30.

Relevant Literature.

Catalogues

Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, (London,1966), no. 95.

Hugh Brigstocke et al, Poussin: Sacraments and Bacchanals (Edinburgh, 1981), no. 9; no 10 (Cleveland drawing).

Philippe Malgouyres, Charles Mellin. Un Lorrain entre Rome et Naples (Charles Mellin. A native of Lorraine between Rome and Naples, Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2007

Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin: The Early Years in Rome, (Fort Worth, 1988), no. 69; no. D162 (Cleveland drawing, here listed as copy).

Jacques Thuillier, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Poussin, (Paris, 1974), B 24.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London, 1984), no. 57.

Other Literature.

Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (Washington, 1967, rep, London, 1995).

Francis Haskell and S. Rinehart: “The Dal Pozzo collection, Some new Evidence”, Burlington Magazine, 102, [1960], pp.318-26;

Brejon de Lavergnée, Tableaux de Poussin et d’autres artistes français dans la collection Da Pozzo: Deux Inventaires inédits Revue de l’art 19 (1973), 78-96.

Denis Mahon, “Poussin au carrefour des années trente,”Actes, I, 1960, 237ff.

Denis Mahon,  "Poussin's Early Development: An Alternative Hypothesis", Burlington Magazine,  Vol. 102, No. 688, Nicolas Poussin and His Circle (Jul., 1960),pp. 288-327.

Didier Rykner, Review of Mellin exhibition, 2007, http://www.thearttribune.com/Charles-Mellin.html.

Timothy J. Standring, “Some Pictures by Poussin in the Dal Pozzo Collection: Three New Inventories”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 130, No. 1025 (Aug., 1988), pp. 608-626.

Doris Wild, “Charles Mellin ou Nicolas Poussin,”Gazette des beaux arts 68, (1966), 177-214, 204f.

Doris Wild, “Charles Mellin ou Nicolas Poussin,”Gazette des beaux arts 68, (1967), 3-44.

Doris Wild, “Nouvelles attributions à Charles Mellin” La Revue dui Louvre ,21 (1971), 347-352.

Doris Wild, Nicolas Poussin: Leben, Werk, Eskurse. 2 vols. (Zurich, 1980), vol. 2, M 29.

 

5. Two Heads fragment.

Two Heads of Women, possibly Andrea di Lione.

Oil on Canvas, 32 x 45.5 cm, possibly 1626-27.

PRIVATE COLLECTION, U.K., (on long term loan to Dulwich Picture Gallery).

Provenance.

According to Blunt (1960, 1966), this was a fragment of a picture representing the Adoration of the Golden Calf “painted for an unnamed Neapolitan patron.” Poussin’s biographer, Félibien, recorded the existence of this picture, saying it was damaged in the Masaniello revolt of 1647, but that a fragment was saved and brought to Rome, when he saw it between 1647 and 1649. It belonged to the Earls of Carlisle, and passed by inheritance to George Howard.  In a Burlington article of 1947 Blunt had described the emergence of a small canvas containing two heads of women as lot 39 in a Christie’s auction of three years earlier. This came from a sale of pictures at Castle Howard, with an attribution to Guido Reni. It was bought by Cecil Liddell, and passed by inheritance to his two brothers, Guy and David Liddell, and to his niece, Mrs John Booth.  It is currently on long term loan to Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Related Works.

The types, particularly the woman on the left are related to Andrea di Lione’s San Francisco pastiche of a lost original which was dealt with the last post.

Engravings.

The composition from which this fragment supposedly emanates was never engraved; therefore nobody knows what the lost composition looked like.

Drawings

None.

Description and Theme

No specific theme, unless assumed it is connected to the Golden Calf composition.

Technical Notes and Connoisseurship Issues.

In 1949 Blunt described the canvas thus: “The condition of the picture is remarkable. Apart from a small amount of damage along the lower edge and a few stoppings the paint is still completely fresh. The stretcher, which dates at latest from the early eighteenth century, is not the original, since the picture has been relined, though at such an early period that a very close examination was necessary to establish the fact. On the back are the figures 50, painted on the canvas itself and also on a label which appears to be of the eighteenth century.” Blunt exhibited it in his Louvre exhibition of 1960 (no.13) and inserted in his CR of 1966 (no. 27). PCP has seen the fragment before, but honestly cannot recall its colours, nor can I find a colour reproduction. In view of this it will be helpful to repeat Blunt’s description of the colour scheme and details from Blunt’s 1949 article:

“The heads in the painting are about three quarters life-size. That on the left, looking down, is of a woman with auburn-brown hair, bound in the classical manner with a crimson fillet. Over her shoulders is a golden-yellow cloak, from under which appears a white dress. The other head is seen in profile looking upwards and also out of the composition, her hair being partly gathered under a white cloth covering the back of her head. The most striking feature of the painting is the combination of broad and solid modelling with freedom of handling and subtlety in the treatment of light, which glances across the features without destroying the classical firmness of their form. This fusion of almost opposite qualities is typical of Poussin's large paintings of about 1627-1629. The technique and handling are again those of Poussin in the later twenties. The dark bolus ground on which he normally worked is in certain parts deliberately left visible, especially in the hair of the woman on the left which is constructed mainly by touches of golden-brown paint over the almost raw ground. The golden drapery is painted with greater freedom and with the rich impasto to be seen in the priest in the St. Erasmus, the poet of the Inspiration and in all the figures of the St. Catherine. In certain points of detail the St. Catherine presents the closest parallel, particularly in the painting of the heads. The method of indicating the eyebrows with a single very firm stroke of the brush is to be found in the left-hand head in the fragment and in the Virgin in the Cook painting; and the curious shadowed outline of the chin in the profile figure is repeated in the same figure, as well as in the mourning mother of the Innocents. There is even a similar weakness in both paintings in the clumsy way in which the ear appears from under the hair. Finally, the curious device of indicating the eye-lashes with single dark strokes can also be seen in the St. Catherine and other pictures of the time.”

In his later monograph, Blunt extended Poussin’s sphere of influence to take in such paintings as Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love where he believed the heads of the women, particularly the right one, had their origins. Whilist not denying that this type may derive from Titian, the massive stumbling block is that this fragment stylistically resembles Andrea di Lione’s version of the Adoration of the Golden Calf in San Francisco. What puts its non-autograph status beyond doubt is that, as Stephen Conrad- who’s viewed it many times at Dulwich- says it is impossible to accept due to the position the heads would have on a canvas turned around, due to the X-rays at a right angle that show a Colosseum-like building. In the words of Wright, whose opinion Stephen is conveying:

“The attribution to Poussin of the Two Heads is further demolished by the X-Ray which reveals a fragment of a large Landscape with ruins- most probably the Colosseum. Unfortunately for those who continue to believe that the picture is a fragment from the large lost composition the landscape revealed in the X-Ray is at right angles to the heads thus supposing an impossibly large landscape for the canvas to have been reused in the horizontal instead of upright position.”

Blunt knew about the X-Ray, as he reproduced it in his monograph on Poussin ( fig. 72). It did not dissuade him from his theory about the fragment; indeed, it served to convince Blunt that here, as elsewhere, Poussin had met with little success at a first attempt and therefore revised his design. Blunt made the same kind of argument about the recently stolen Midas (Ajaccio) which had also been X-rayed by the Louvre in 1960. Though Blunt noted the X-Ray of the 'Two Heads' proved Poussin painted "large compositions at a fairly early date", he failed to come to the same conclusion as Wright, presumably because he had so much invested in his theory of Poussin's early stylistic development. Despite the problem detailed above, the curators of the 1981 Edinburgh exhibition took Blunt's view,  declaring it "obviously a very early work." The Edinburg curators compared it with the St Catherine in the same museum, a Poussin problem I will return to in the next entry.

The fragment also provides a salutary object lesson is how a connoisseurial argument can unravel unless the authenticity of the foundation is verified beyond doubt- the technical evidence put paid to that.  Cracks had become to appear in the edifice in 1973 with Rosenberg removing the San Francisco pastiche from Poussin’s oeuvre. Obviously this had dire consequences for the fortunes of the fragment, which has typographical and stylistic associations with the San Francisco picture. Yet Blunt continued to hold out for the fragment as a Poussin piece, as is made clear in a review of Thuillier’s CR in 1974. It looks like Blunt went to his grave convinced that the fragment was by Poussin's hand. A year after Blunt’s death in 1983, Wright observed that the two heads were both derived from different periods of Poussin’s career: one obviously had some lineage with the San Francisco Golden Calf; the other was based on the head of a nymph in Poussin’s London Bacchanal before a Term of Pan, of about 1634.
This practice of combining motifs from different periods would really come into its own after Poussin’s death in 1665. The recent appalling Baptism of Christ serves to demonstrate that fact.

I'll do a post on Andrea di Lione, and his significance to Poussin at a later date.

Attribution Views

Blunt, 1966 + (1628-9)

Blunt, 1974 + (similar to Edinburgh St Catherine).

Thuillier, 1974 + (1629-30).

Wild, 1980 + (c.1630).

 Edinburgh, 1981 exh., Brigstocke et al + (1627-29).

Wright, 1984, –  (pastiche)

Wright, 2007 – (pastiche).

PCP, 2012 (as per Wright).

Relevant Literature.

Catalogues

Anthony Blunt, Exposition Nicolas Poussin, (Museé du Louvre), 1960, no. 13.

Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, (London,1966), no. 26.

Hugh Brigstocke et al, Poussin: Sacraments and Bacchanals (Edinburgh, 1981), no. 3.

Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin: The Early Years in Rome, (Fort Worth, 1988), no. 82.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London, 1984), no. 86.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (revised, London, 2007), need to check.

Other Literature.

Anthony Blunt, “Poussin Studies II: Three Early Works,” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 89, No. 535 (Oct., 1947), pp. 266-271.

Anthony Blunt, “The Complete Poussin,” (review of Jacques Thuillier’s CR), Burlington Magazine, Vol. 116, No. 861 (Dec., 1974), pp. 760-763.

Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (Washington, 1967, rep, London, 1995), 77,81,83,90,179.

4. The Adoration of the Golden Calf (San Francisco pastiche).

The Adoration of the Golden Calf

Oil on Canvas, 99.4 x 128.6 cm, possibly 1626-27.

SAN FRANCISCO, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. (Click on this link for the zoom function on the Kress Coll. site).

Provenance.

First published by Johnstone in 1919, but the picture described here as a “logical design” seems to bear no relation to the clumsily conceived picture in San Francisco

According to Blunt in 1966, this is not the National Gallery version because its recorder, Sandart, does not mention a pendant, which he would have had he been referring to the London version; that was a pendant to the Melbourne Israelites Crossing the Red Sea. Blunt thought the San Francisco work was the painting mentioned in the van Biesum sale in Rotterdam in the 18^th century, and was probably seen by Richardson in the Flinck collection, Amsterdam, before 1722. A painting of the same subject was in the Dufresne sale, Amsterdam, (22/8/1770). In 1919, the San Franciscan picture was with the Sackville Gallery, London, and was said previously to have belonged to the Earl of Harewood, and then to have been in the Estate of Rudolph Bottenweiser. After being sold by the Sackville it was in the E. May collection, Paris. Later it was with Heinemann, New York, from whom it was bought by the Kress Foundation and presented to the museum in 1952.

Related Works.

Fragment of a version of the Adoration of the Golden Calf painted for an unnamed Neapolitan patron, Mrs John Booth, Manor Park, Southwell, Nottinghamshire, 1627-9, now on temporary loan to Dulwich Picture Gallery. This picture will be dealt with the next entry. 

Engravings.

Jean-Baptiste de Poilly, (1669-1728). In a note to his 1995 article, Keazor says that in 1960 “Blunt ruled out both drawing and engraving as proofs of authenticity by hypothesising that the painting could have been created by a follower on the basis of Poussin's drawing, while Poilly could have transmitted this early falsification under the name of Poussin.”

Drawings

Windsor, Royal Library, R11884: Verso of the Intervention of the Sabine Women, black chalk. Blunt disputed the subject on the recto and said that it was the Victory of the Israelites over the Midianites. Clayton maintains the recto is the Sabine intervention.

Description and Theme

See this entry on the Northampton copy of the London version for description of subject.  

Technical Notes.

According to Johnstone, the paint is deleicately laid on over a red bole ground, which shows through in places. Though this might be consistent with Poussin's early technique, including the harmonisation of colours in the Venetian manner, it does not prove authorship. The technical examination has not been helped by what Keazor called " a somewhat harsh cleaning” in 1957. That restoration campaign took away the last digit of the date. In 1988, Oberhuber described the picture “either a copy of an important painting by Poussin of around 1629/30... or as the very damaged and rubbed original.” See below for a discussion about attribution. In 1977, Eisler observed that the painting was “badly preserved,” which owes much to the disastrous cleaning of 1957. 

Additional Remarks.

Dating.

There has been a problem with dating. Blunt says the date on the painting originally read “N.P.1629,” but Martin Davies thought it was 1626. According to Blunt, in 1966, this view was “generally accepted.” As Clayton explained in 1994, the last digit disappeared during cleaning in 1957. Clayton is also right to point out that none of Poussin’s early paintings are dated; therefore the date on the San Francisco Golden Calf might be “totally spurious.” It's certainly the case that Poussin tends to sign his name on objects in works of the 1630s, not in the previous decade. Based on an analysis of space composition in Poussin’s compositions of 1630, Clayton judges that the de Young painting was done in 1630, and if the “inscription on the San Francisco painting had any basis in fact, it presumably read NP 1629.”

Sources and Influences.

Originally, Blunt had no hesitation in accepting the San Francisco picture as autograph; it was considered authentic in his CR of 1966 (no. 25). However, it is difficult to understand why Blunt would grant authorship to Poussin of such an unbalanced and inept composition in the first place. It is true that some figures resemble Poussin’s own; but against this must be set the uncharacteristic colour, the hard metallic tone, and the dry handling. This seems to be a jumble of different artistic sources such as Mantegna, Titian, and various others. The altar boy with his candelabrum seems a reminiscence of figures from Mantegna’s Triumphs of Ceasar, "The Elephants." while the urn on the drapery is obviously purloined from Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne.  Poussin never operates in this way; if he borrows a quotation, he assimilates it into his own pictorial language. PCP had come to these conclusions about sources independently of Keazor, though the latter notes that the Titian derived-urn on drapery also features in Poussin Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Munich) of the early 1630s. Poussin also used the motif on the London Triumph of Silenus, which as a very problematic picture merits another entry. While we’re still on the source hunt, Keazor identifies the small jug with leaves stuck in as originating in the famous Roman frieze from the Temple of Neptune, displaying instruments used for sacrifice and published in a mid-sixteenth-century engraving by Nicolas Beatrizet in Antonio Lafrery's Speculum Romana Magnificentiae. Keazor also observes that Poussin “has followed quite closely the form of the metal oinochoe (vase) with a laurel branch, third from the right in the second row of the engraving, as well as the two plates”. The relevance of all these influences is whether this erudition and archaeological detail supports the view that this composition is Poussin’s own. That obviously brings us to the question of attribution. 

 Attribution.

The San Francisco picture was first rejected by Rosenberg in 1973, and as Keazor notes, Blunt welcomed with much relief the suggestion of putting this weak picture outside Poussin’s oeuvre. Blunt noted in the same year “I have always found this picture distasteful, and difficult to fit into the early period of Poussin.” Most Poussin scholars favoured the rejection; but in 1988, characteristically Oberhuber went his own way and tried to optimistically slot it into Poussin’s early development, though whether he saw it as autograph or copy is unclear.   Oberhuber’s argument partially depends upon the resemblance of the kneeling man in the foreground’s similarity to a follower in the Virgin Appearing to St James (Louvre, about 1631). This figure with arched back he sees as Poussin’s attempt to create an architectonic emphasis in the Golden Calf, but even accepting the similarity of the two figures, the whole composition lacks Poussin’s careful construction and deliberation. There is a world of difference from the sophisticated baroque of the St James to the mix and match crudity of the San Francisco picture.

There is some debate about whether the San Francisco painting is a copy or a pastiche. It was in 1973 that Blunt and Rosenberg started to call the painting an old fake, or pastiche; and it was Rosenberg who first attributed the work to the Neapolitan painter, Andrea di Lione. Blunt had argued in a much earlier article that Andrea visited Rome and saw Poussin’s neo-Venetian works from the late 1620s. In 1982 Rosenberg listed the San Francisco picture as “a copy of a lost original”, a view that has been strengthened by the existence of a matching composition on a drawing at Windsor. See Clayton’s remarks above. The copy issue will have to remain in abeyance, but PCP is in accord with Wright who in 1984 called the painting a “curiously incompetent picture,” more likely a pastiche, which is a view Wright presumably maintained in his revised CR of 2007? It is almost beyond doubt that Andrea is the author of the San Francisco painting; this artist has a tendency to appropriate motifs from Poussin’s art and insert them into his own. A key issue here is whether Andrea abstracted them from an original composition by Poussin from the late 1620s, or other paintings with similar motifs in the next decade. The urn appears in autograph paintings of the early to mid-1630s; could Andrea have been quoting from those?

For convenience, here are the attribution views of scholars (+ = acceptance, – = rejection)

Blunt, 1966 + (date reads 1626 not 1629 as previously thought).

Badt, 1969 + (1626).

Blunt, 1973 –

Rosenberg, –  1973 (Andrea di Lione).

Thuillier 1974, – (good copy of lost original of 1629).

Eisler 1977 + (1626, badly preserved).

Wild, 1980 – (copy of work by Poussin of 1629).

Rosenberg, 1982 – (pastiche).

Wright, 1984, – (pastiche).

Oberhuber, 1988. It is difficult to determine Oberhuber’s view. He labels it “possibly an excellent copy”, but does not say in his catalogue whether it is after Poussin, or autograph. In his discussion, it “remains a valid document for the development of Poussin’s work.” This was the view of Thuillier in 1974. Whether one should argue Poussin’s development on the basis of what seems a variant or pastiche is an issue that didn’t seem to trouble Oberhuber too much.

Wright, 2007 -? (pastiche).

PCP, 2012 – (pastiche by Andrea di Lione). This corresponds to Rosenberg’s position of 1982, and Wright’s of 1984 and 2007.

Literature.

Catalogues

Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, (London,1966), no. 26.

Martin Clayton, Poussin: Works on Paper, (London, 1995), no. 22.

C Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, European Schools Excluding Italian, (Oxford, 1977), no. K1876, pp. 269ff.

Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin: The Early Years in Rome, (Fort Worth, 1988), no. 82.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London, 1984), no. 86.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (revised, London, 2007), need to check.

Other Literature.

Anthony Blunt, “A Poussin-Castiglione Problem: Classicism and the Picturesque in 17th century Rome, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 3, no. 1, (Oct, 1939-Jan, 1940), 142-147.

Anthony Blunt, “La premièr période romaine de Poussin,” Nicolas Poussin: Actes du Colloque Poussin, (Paris, 1960), Vol. 1., p. 164.

Anthony Blunt, “Poussin's' Death of Germanicus lent to Paris,” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 115, No. 845 (Aug., 1973), pp. 533- 536.

Walter Friedlaender, Nicolas Poussin: A New Approach, (London, 1970), p. 138.

Henry Keazor, “Poussin, Titian and Mantegna, and the Adoration of the Golden Calf at San Francisco” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 137, No. 1102 (Jan., 1995), pp. 12-16. See Keazor for expansive bibliography on this painting.

J.H. Johnstone, “An Early Picture by Nicolas Poussin,” Burlington Magazine, XXXV, 1919, p.9.

 

 

 

3. The Adoration of the Golden Calf (Northampton copy)

The Adoration of the Golden Calf

oil on Canvas, 87 x 123.3 cm, date unknown.

NORTHAMPTON , Museums and Art Gallery.

Provenance.

The NICE site states this painting was given by Mr Nigel Brown in memory of his father Reginald W. Brown, 1957. R.W. Brown was Curator of the Northampton Museum between 1920 and 1955. No further information is known about the ownership of the painting before Brown, but its provenance might only go back to the nineteenth-century- see below.

The Northampton canvas is one of the many copies made after the famous original in the National Gallery, London.  As Humphrey Wine points out, the copies situation is complicated by the existence of variant treatments of the subject, either by or once attributed to Poussin. One is known through a painting in San Francisco, which may reflect an original design by Poussin, but which is definitely not painted by him. PCP thinks it is likely to be a pastiche by Andrea di Lione, more of him in another post.

There is another composition recorded by Félibien, painted for a Neapolitan patron, damaged in 1647, a fragment of which was recorded by Blunt in an English collection.  The whole composition is unknown as it was never engraved, and there seem to be no surviving painted copies. This fragment which shows the heads of two women was exhibited in Paris in 1960 (no. 13). This may have been an earlier attempt at the subject as the heads are consistent with Poussin’s style of the late 1620s.  Wright (L 4) dates this to 1630, but argues against Blunt’s hypothesis. Rather than discuss this problem here, we’ll postpone this until PCP considers the San Francisco Calf and the fragment in the next entries as it seems logical to consider these all together.

The posthumous inventory of Etienne Gantrel (d. 1706) records another copy of the Golden Calf valued at 60 livres, which Wine believes may have been a copy after Poussin.

Finally, a lost painting recorded in the van Biesum sale, Rotterdam, 1719, may according to Pierre Rosenberg “have been the treatment of the theme providing the basis for the San Francisco work.” According to Blunt in 1966, the San Francisco picture was the one sold in Rotterdam, but eventually he was to reject the picture.  As should be obvious by now, reconstructing the evolution of this subject is extremely complicated!

The Northampton copy must be Wine’s no 2 recorded in 1948, as Blunt lists a copy in a private collection, Northampton, dated 1948. According to Wine, the photograph of this picture suggested a copy from the 19^th century, which is at odds with the NICE record which dates the Northampton picture between 1670 and “probably 1741.” The NICE curatorial record adds that “the style of this copy suggests that it might have been made some decades later by an Italian painter.”

Related Works.

Original. LONDON, National Gallery, 1634-35, oil on canvas, 193 x 128 cm.

Other Copies of the London Original: NB, this information is taken from Wine- see below.

1)      Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, no. 1931, 99 x 133 cm.

2)      Private collection, England, recorded in 1948. According to Wine, the photograph of this in the NG dossier suggests to him a 19^th century copy. Blunt refers to this copy in his CR of 1966.

3)      In reverse, a small oil sketch (11 ½  x 15 ½ in.) sold Christie’s 14^th January 1972 (lot 101, 80 guineas). According to Wine, there is a photograph of this in the N.G. dossier.

4)      Ader Picard Tajan, Paris, 30^th June, 1989 (lot 196), 56.5 x 71 cm.)

5)      Moscow, Pushkin Museum, 114 x 167 cm. Probably a copy dating to the beginning of the 18^th century.

6)      A copy said to be by Charles Lebrun was in the Robert Strange sale, Christie’s 5^th March 1773, (lot 109).

7)      A variant treatment in a private collection, London, recorded in 1970. Apparently, no photograph of this in the N.G., just a description.

8)      A painted version by the 17^th century artist Pierre de Sève (1623-95) for the Gobelins tapestry works was made sometime between 1684 and 1691, probably towards the beginning of this period when the London original was owned by Phillipe de Lorraine. For more on the tapestries, see here.

Wine then goes on to list what “may be copies” of the London original.

1)      Lot 101 of the Dufresne sale, Amsterdam, 1770, the recorded size of which was 41 x 68 pouces (i.e. 111 x 184 cm).

2)      Item 64 recorded in the posthumous inventory of J-B Maximilien Titon on 12^th August, 1768.

3)      The painting of the Adoration of the Golden Calf offered for sale by Aureliano Albano, chief secretary of Prince Carlo Emanuele of Savoy, to another of the prince’s secretaries in a letter of 17^th December 1862 in which Aureliano claimed his painting to be by Poussin and to have been made for the Del Pozzo family.

4)      Lancret sale, Paris, Rémy, 5^th April, 1782, lot 332.

5)      Dezallier d’Argenville included among works by Poussin then in Rome “the Crossing of the Red sea”, “the Adoration of the Golden Calf” and among those by him in France in one of various unnamed collections, “the Golden Calf.”

6)      A painting of the Golden Calf purporting to be by Poussin was exhibited at the Académie Royale de Toulouse in 1783.

7)      Not a copy, but a painting of Moses and Aaron holding the Tablets of the Law in which the figure of Aaron is based on the figure in the original in London, is in the parish church of Harwich, Essex. It was acquired from William Paris in 1700.

Engravings

1)      By E. Baudet.

2)      Anonymous, published by J.F. Cars.

3)      Anonymous, published by J. Audran.

4)      Anonymous, published by E. Gantrel.

5)      By L. Surugue.

6)      Anonymous Dutch engraving.

Drawings

No original drawings for the London version exist, though there are may be copies after preparatory drawings. There are about six of these copies listed in Prat and Rosenberg’s catalogue raisonné of the drawings. According to Wine, there may be other drawings connected with the composition that surfaced in eighteenth-century sales

Description and Theme

The source is the Old Testament (Exodus Chap. 24). Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of the Law from God, leaving the children of Israel in the care of Aaron and Hur. The people thought Moses would not return so they asked Aaron to make other gods; he made a golden calf and set it up on an altar. Before this the Israelites made offerings and celebrated. On seeing the calf on his return, and seeing the people dancing, Moses grew angry and broke the stone tablets on which God had written the commandments.

The original in London was painted for Amedeo dal Pozzo. It is the pendant to the Israelites Crossing the Red Sea, the Melbourne painting recently restored.  The London picture was not separated from its pendant until 1945.

Technical Notes.

No technical information is available on the Northampton copy yet, but judging from the PCF photograph, the picture doesn’t seem to be in good condition.

Additional Remarks.

The Northampton copy is not tremendously important in the scheme of things, but highlights the copy situation with this composition, and other variants. A more pressing issue here is dating. On the PCF site, the Northampton copy is dated between 1700-1741; this is less broader than NICE’s date range which opts for 1670-1741. But, PCP believes that Wine may be right in suggesting that the Northampton picture is a nineteenth-century copy, possibly even by an English artist knowledgeable about Poussin’s designs? Poussin’s compositions with dancing figures like the Golden Calf, Dance to the Music of Time (Wallace Coll.) and the Bacchanal before a Herm (also NG) were much admired by English and Irish painters in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, the Irish artist James Barry incorporated Poussinesque dancing groups into his compositions, like his Grecian Harvest Home. It may be advisable for the PCF to re-label this painting “After Poussin, possibly nineteenth-century copyist.” 

Catalogues

Anthony Blunt, Exposition Nicolas Poussin, (Museé du Louvre, 1960), no. 38.

Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, (London, 1966), no. 26.

Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, Nicolas Poussin 1594-1665: Catalogue raisonné des dessins, 2 vols., (Milan, 1994).

Humphrey Wine, The Seventeenth Century French Paintings in the National Gallery, (London, 2001), 314-323.

Wright, C., Old Master Paintings in Britain: An Index of Old Master Continental Paintings Executed before c.1800 in Public Collections in the United Kingdom, London, 1976, p. 165.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London, 1984), no. 86.

Other Literature.

Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (London, 1995), pp. 238-239.

Walter Friedlaender, Nicolas Poussin: A New Approach, (London, 1970), pp. 138-139.

Pablo Pérez d'Ors; Angela Smith, NICE curatorial record.

2. The Holy Family, Leicester Art Gallery.

The Holy Family with the Infant St John

Oil on Canvas, 97.5 x 73 cm.

LEICESTER , Museum and Art Gallery.

Provenance.

Gift from Mr C. Hedley Haddon, 1943.

According to the NICE record, this work was given to the museum at Leicester in recognition of efforts made during the war on behalf of the owner, whose collection was safely evacuated from his home. The Leicester painting is a much smaller version of the almost life-size Holy Family in the Ringling Museum at Sarasota. From Poussin’s correspondence we know that the Sarasota Holy Family was begun for “une personne grande,” probably the Duc de Créqui, who declined the offer of the picture. Though unfinished, the Sarasota painting was offered in August 1655 to Mme de Montmort, later Mme de Chantelou,who had asked for a Madonna. This offer was withdrawn in November 1655, and presumably went to the original commissioner, the Duc de Crequi? After the 17^th century, the Sarasota Holy Family is found in the collection of Sir Richard Worsley (1751-1808) where it passes by inheritance to the Earls of Yarborough; later sold at Christie’s, London 12/7/1929;  and bought by Newton with Böhler; later sold by him to the Ringling Museum.

The Sarasota painting was engraved by Voet, and according to Blunt, a dedication by Jean Dughet to Jean Pointel (Poussin’s banker friend) led to the error of thinking that the large Holy Family was painted for Pointel. As Pointel was engaged in buying pictures for the Duc de Créqui in Rome, it has been suggested that “une personne grande” referred to the latter. A problem here, as Blunt points out, is that the inventory of the Duc de Créqui’s paintings contains two “Holy Families” by Poussin, but neither of them corresponds exactly to the Sarasota painting. One is the Holy Family at Harvard (Holy Family with St Elizabeth and St John the Baptist) , and the other might be a “Holy Family with adoring putti” which obviously doesn't match the Sarasota painting, or its Leicester variant.

Though there is no definite proof, we could accept that the illustrious client was Créqui, and that Poussin may have painted a smaller picture for Pointel as a gift, or for services rendered in securing him commissions, or maybe just out of friendship.  According to the NICE report, Wright “and others judged it to be the original of a composition which was engraved by Voet, and dedicated to Pointel who may once have owned it.” However, Jacques Thuillier rejected the Leicester picture in his catalogue raisonné of 1974, and inexplicably the Leicester painting isn’t mentioned in Blunt’s 1966 CR despite it being known in the 1950s.  As to the 17^th century owner of the Sarasota canvas, Blunt was content to leave the case open until further evidence came to light. The success of Wright’s attribution to Pointel rests partly on whether the provenance of the Sarasota picture can be traced to the Duc de Créqui who certainly had a connection with Pointel, according to Saint-Simon.

Related Works.

Original. SARASOTA, John and Mable Ringling Museum, 1655, oil on canvas, 193 x 128 cm.

Other Copies:

1)      Meyer-Glitza collection, Hamburg, 108 x 80 cms. Inherited from Dr Adolf Glitza (1820-94). Sold Hauswedell, Hamburg, 27/11/65, lot. 28.

2)      Church of Montmorency (Oise).

Engravings:

1)      By Alexander Voet.

2)      Published Malbouré.

Description and Theme

The Sarasota Holy Family corresponds to Poussin’s description of a picture he had begun for “une personage grande” mentioned above:  large, consisting of four figures, showing St John in the act of begging Christ to give him his blessing. In the Louvre exhibition of 1960 Blunt said that these Holy Families were Poussin’s “last word on the theme.” He described them having an unperturbed sculptural quality, simplicity of modelling and eliminating picturesque detail. He also thought that these were traits consistent with the pictures of the aging master. The monumental quality of the Sarasota picture is noteworthy. Poussin never painted a more pensive Virgin who seems to be lost in reflection while Joseph standing at the rear, hand on chin, is deeply thoughtful.  The mask-like quality of Joseph’s face seems appropriate to Kurt’s Badt’s point that this feature (linked with the 1648 Holy Family on the Steps) expresses a “higher universality.” Also, Gert Fischer’s idea that the mask-like faces of Poussin’s figures in religious paintings of the period 1648-50 “can be read as an expression of inherent divinity which is concealed yet palpably present” seems to fit these Holy Families of 1655. By contrast the children seem to suggest the human external world with their raised arms and animated gestures, which contrast with the frozen introspection of the adults.

Poussin’s motivation for painting on such a large canvas are unclear. According to Verdi, at least three Holy Families are painted on upright canvases, in the manner of Raphael and his followers. These are the Sarasota and Hermitage versions (see below) and possibly the Holy Family in the Temple, in the Museé Condé at Chantilly. Poussin here seems to be trying to measure up to Raphael, or overstepping him; if one were judging Holy Families on seriousness of mood, one could say he did. Friedlaender pointed out how different these vertical formats were from Poussin’s “oblong canvases” of a few years earlier, e.g. the Hermitage Holy Family in Egypt, painted for Mme de Montmort, later Mme de Chantelou, in 1648; or the Cleveland Holy Family on the Steps, also painted in 1648. Perhaps, as Friedlaender said, the large scale suited Poussin’s ideas on “planimetric conventions with [the] monumental style of the Maniera Magnifica”, as well as blending “religious introspection” with “stoic meditation.”  

Though something of the sombre mood is retained in the Leicester variant, due to its reduced size, the effect on the spectator is different. Some of the architectural background like the right side of Virgin’s throne are lost; this allows the viewer to focus on the Holy Family alone, instead of their surroundings. These changes could support the idea that the Leicester canvas was painted with a different purpose, possibly as an intimate, devotional picture, or just a gift as suggested above- but still the problem remains of who owned it. There are a number of these Holy Families that are connected with a circle of French patrons, e.g. the Hermitage Holy Family (above) was owned by Chantelou who acquired it in June, 1655. Should the Leicester painting be placed within the network of French patrons who were both devout and of a “stoic” disposition? The seriousness of these Holy Families might reflect the philosophical nature of such patrons, though the present author thinks Verdi’s point about Poussin wanting to surpass Raphael’s treatment of the subject might be the more likely motivation for the grandeur of these Holy Families.

Technical Notes

The Leicester painting was originally rejected by Thuillier in 1974, but the museum says that “after cleaning in the early 1980s its quality became clear.” No more is known of the condition of this painting; perhaps Wright puts it in the context of the cleaning in his catalogue. It is worth quoting Wright’s words on the Sarasota Holy Family in his CR of 1981, though he doesn’t list copies or variants:

“It appears to be good enough for an authentic Poussin although there is always the problem of brushwork after about 1640. Copies are extremely difficult to detect owing to the dryness of Poussin’s handling. Recent opinion has in any case been in favour of the picture.”

Wright then cites the case of the Washington Holy Family on the Steps, now thought to be a copy after the original at Cleveland. “The only factor against the Washington picture is that it is curiously hard in handling which would imply that it was a good old copy. However, a word of warning- Poussin’s handling was becoming less and less personal at this stage and exact handling of painting is a dangerous contention if it alone can decide the issue between original and copy. Recent publications of the X-rays of the Cleveland version have now removed doubts as to its being a possible copy. The question now remains as to whether the Washington version was also painted by Poussin.” This last point obviously relates to Tony Green’s comment on the previous Christ Healing the Blind Men post about copies and autograph copies, an aspect of Poussin’s production which will be analysed on this blog another time.

Additional Remarks.

On the PCF site the Leicester picture is “attributed to Poussin” According to the NICE curatorial record, catalogued as “after Poussin,” in 1958. Mentioned by Wright in his Old Master Paintings in Britain of 1976. Subsequently catalogued in Wright’s Masterpieces of Reality: French 17th Century Painting, which needs to be checked to see what precise arguments were deployed to support the Leicester attribution. There is still the mystery of Blunt failing to mention an English variant of the Sarasota painting in his 1966 CR, despite the fact the picture was known to scholars in the late 1950s. Blunt may have missed it, or ignored it because he felt it unworthy of attention. The Leicester picture appeared on the Poussin radar with Thuillier considering it in 1974, and Wright proposing it as autograph in 1985 after cleaning. However, it is important to state that cleaning a picture that has copy status doesn’t automatically make it autograph. On the provenance front, placing the picture in Pointel’s collection doesn’t seem an unreasonable hypothesis, but more work needs to be done on Poussin’s network of clients in relation to these enigmatic Holy Families; also the issue of copies, including autograph copies, might elucidate the circumstances in which the Leicester variant appeared.

Catalogues

Anthony Blunt, Exposition Nicolas Poussin, (Museé du Louvre, 1960), no. 107. (Sarasota original)

Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, (London,1966), no. 51.(Sarasota original).

Jacques Thuillier, L'Opera completa di Nicolas Poussin, Milan 1974, cat. no. 196, pl. 196a. (Leicester variant).

Christopher Wright, Old Master Paintings in Britain: An Index of Continental Old Master Paintings Executed before c.1800 in Public Collections in the United Kingdom, London, 1976, p. 165. (Leicester variant)

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London, 1984), no. 174. (Sarasota original).

Christopher Wright, Masterpieces of Reality: French 17th Century Painting, Leicester, 1985, cat. no. 26, p. 131, ill. p. 37, pl. 26 (Leicester variant).

Richard Verdi, Nicolas Poussin 1594-1665, (Royal Academy, London, 1995), pp. 294-295.

Various, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery: Collection of Paintings, (Leicester, 1958), cat. no. 337, as after Poussin (Leicester variant).

Other Literature.

Correspondance  de Nicolas Poussin ed. Ch. Jouanny, (Paris, 1911), pp.436, 437f., 439, 441.

Kurt Badt, Die Kunst des Nicolas Poussin (Cologne, 1969), 24-5 and 420f.

Anthony Blunt, Poussin Studies IV: Two Rediscovered Late Works, the Burlington Magazine, Vol 92, No. 563, (Feb 1950), pp. 38-52.

Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (London, 1995), pp. 238-239.

Walter Friedlaender, Nicolas Poussin: A New Approach, (London, 1970), p. 68.

Gert Fischer, “Presence of divinity: Poussin’s conception of figures and the depiction of mythical nature,” in Presence: The Inherence of the Prototype within Images and Other Objects, ed. Rupert Shepherd, (London, 2006), pp. 121-134.

Angela Smith, NICE curatorial record.

 

1. Copy of Christ Healing the Blind Men.

(After Poussin) Christ Healing the Blind

Oil on Canvas, 119 x 170.2 cm.

BIRMINGHAM, Museum and Art Gallery.

Provenance.

Presented to the museum by Mrs Maud Lowndes, 1933. No further information about the history of this picture known. According to the entry on the NICE website this copy may be one of three versions recorded in the 19th century, copies 4,5,6 in Blunt's list- see below. Blunt lists the Birmingham copy as separate from these three though. The NICE record also states:

"A letter from BMAG keeper, Richard Lockett (1988) states that he considers this painting to have been done in Poussin's studio and, therefore, in Paris some time in the late seventeenth century. Another version was sold, Sotheby's, 4 April 1984, lot 270, as attrib. to Coypel. Yet another featured in the exhbition, Nicholas Poussin et Son Temps, April - May 1961, no. 9 as attributed to Bourdon (114 x 163 cms)."

This may be a copy done just after Poussin's death in 1665. Blunt noted that copies flourished after the master's death because Poussin had left hardly any paintings, and his works were in great demand. To assuage this craving, painters either copied or tried to falsify his compositions. As for the question of Poussin's studio in the late 17th century, Poussin didn't really have one, so I would rule the idea out that the Birmingham variant is a studio creation. The only person likely to have copied the original in Poussin's "studio" was his brother-in-law, Jean Dughet, though Jean was an engaver; he may have engraved the original- see below.The painting shown in 1961, attributed to Bourdon is presumably no. 2 on Blunt's list of copies? The 1984 copy attributed to Coypel was sold at Sotheby's a year after Blunt's death. Blunt includes an engraving puiblished by Coypel (Antoine?) after the painting, no. 4 below.

"Original entry in Gallery Inventory Book states that this was believed to be from the collection of Thos. Wright." More provenace research needed..

Related Works.

Original. PARIS, Museé du Louvre, Christ Healing the Blind, 1650, oil on canvas, 119 x 176 cm.

Other Copies:

1)      Museé des Beaux Arts, Rheims. Bequeathed to the city by Antoine Ferrand de Monthelon in 1712.

2)      National Museum, Copenhagen (560). In the inventory of the Royal Collection by 1732; then ascribed to Bourdon, but actually a free variant of Poussin’s composition by an unidentified follower.

3)      Andre Le Nôtre Collection, 42 x 60 inches. Valued at 100 livres.

4)      Among the pictures of the Robit and other collections exhibited for sale by Bryan in 1801-2.

5)      Lord Berwick Sale, Philips, London, 15/4/1826, lot 186, bt. Lord Gower; by descent to the Dukes of Sutherland; Sutherland sale, Christie’s, London, 11/7/1913, lot 33.

6)      Isaac Pittar Sale, Philips, London, 19/4/1842.

7)      Anon, sale, Christies, London, 6/5/1949, gouache, signed by Henry Toutin.

8)     Sold at Sotheby's 4 April 1984, lot 270, as attrib. to Coypel.

Drawings:

1)      Royal Library, Windsor Castle, pen and brown ink, 151 x 220 mm.

2)      Museé Bonnat, Bayonne, pen and brown ink, 110 x 196 mm.

3)      Royal Library, Windsor Castle, Copy after Poussin, pen and brown ink, brown wash, 144 x 186 mm.

4)      Royal Library, Windsor Castle, Copy after Poussin, pen and brown ink, brown wash, 135 x 171 mm.

Engravings:

1)      By G. Chasteau.

2)      By L. Audran.

3)      Published by Picart le Romain.

4)      Published by Coypel.

5)      Perhaps by Jean Dughet or Pietro del Po. The figure group, less three disciples, without the background. A print of this engraving is to be found in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 

Description and Theme

The subject derives from Matthew, New Testament. Christ heals two blind men by the roadside by touching their eyes.

The Birmingham painting is one of 8 ( possibly 9) copies after Poussin’s celebrated original in the Louvre, which according to Félibien, was painted for the silk merchant Reynon in 1650. Poussin’s original was the subject of a lecture by Sebastian Bourdon given at the French Academy in 1667. As some scholars have argued (Bätschmann, Fumaroli, Packwood), there may be a link here between the science of painting and divine vision; Christ acts as a kind of “Deus Pictor” opening the eyes of the blind to the glory of nature in which God is concealed, the neo-Augustinianism of the “hidden God,” (Packwood).  Unfortunately this dimension is completely lost in the Birmingham copy which lacks Poussin’s careful gradation of colours, or his expert distribution of light and shade. The grandeur of God is not manifested in the landscape of this copy.  

No less interesting is the treatment of the buildings in the copy, shown above. A close inspection reveals certain alterations to architectural features. For instance the villa in the centre- which receives the most light- see below for original-has been slightly modified. It retains the rustication, but the windows on the lower floor have been eliminated. An interesting question arises because of this alteration: could the copyist be basing his changes on actual houses and architecture that he knew? As Blunt pointed out, in the original, this building is Palladian in design, but doesn’t conform strictly to the architect’s style. Poussin’s central villa lacks a pediment over its loggia resulting in a straight skyline. Intriguingly, a similar design to this building can be found in Inigo Jones’s Queen’s House at Greenwich. Poussin obviously didn’t see that, but Blunt found himself looking for a common source. He concluded that Jones and Poussin may have known a drawing of another villa without pediment, but confessed that it was “mysterious” that Poussin could have known of such a drawing.

This isn’t the only alteration the copyist made: he seems to have had an aversion to small windows since he also effaced them in the campanile in the centre, as well as in the house on the wooded slope at the back of the town- the PCF resolution isn't very good, so difficult to show this. As Cropper and Dempsey said, this cluster of buildings containing a bell tower, Christian basilica (with oculus and open loggia) signified generally the early Christian churches of Rome with their medieval towers, including Poussin’s own parish church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina or S. Giorgio in Velabro.  Such a campanile appears in the back of a number of his landscapes of the 1650s, but as Blunt pointed out, Poussin probably made his own variation on buildings he knew on his walks around the district. The origins of the beautiful morning light that Poussin conveys in the original may recollect early morning walks around Rome; Bellori tells us he rose early and walked round the city for several hours.  

Technical Notes

Condition of copy. Unknown. I have viewed this in the museum before, but it is currently not on show. There may be discolouration caused by dirt and varnish- but difficult to say without a technical report. The NICE report describes the copy as a "good, old and faithful copy of the original by Poussin in Louve" with "Copies of this standard unusual for Poussin's late work."

In the Birmingham copy, light doesn’t fall on the enigmatic villa, or indeed the town. In fact, the symbolic function of light is completely absent throughout; with its black storm clouds and darkened landscape, Christ looks like he’s healing the blind in a setting threatened by a thunderstorm. This may be down to the condition of the picture, although curators see this as a "good" copy. Despite this, the when looking at the Birmingham picture in its present state I get the feeling that the copyist didn’t understand the ideas behind Poussin’s original at all-, and one wonders what the source of this copy was. The original was in Reynon's collection until it passed into the collections of the Duc de Richelieu and later sold to Louis XIV in 1665, the year of Poussin's death. The following point must also be borne in mind: the picture in the Louvre isn’t in its original condition; according to Bourdon in 1667, the buildings behind Christ (i.e. the basilica complex) were highly illuminated.
As Bätschmann rightly pointed out, the most illuminated building is the mysterious villa discussed above. Bourdon can’t have seen the picture in this condition, so one wonders what has happened to this picture over time. In the Louvre catalogue of 1960 Blunt comments on its “recent restoration” which he elaborates on in his CR of 1966: when the picture was cleaned by the Louvre, “the colours were found to be unnaturally light for Poussin, and in some places almost strident.” The result led some critics to declare the Louvre painting a copy, a suggestion that has been universally rejected. Blunt upheld the attribution, pointing out that in his lecture Bourdon himself “commented on the unusual brightness of the colour, but justifies it as appropriate to the theme”. The relationship of the colour scheme to the theme has been thoroughly demonstrated by Bätschmann. Besides, Bourdon would have been able to distinguish between a Poussin copy and the original. 

Additional Remarks.

Catalogued on the PCF site as “After” Poussin. In the light of the discussion of architecture above, possibly the work of a 17th copyist with knowledge of Palladian structures or buildings, though this just a hypotheosis. Possible course of action: check architectural detail in other copies and replicas, and compare with buildings in the Birmingham copy and the Louvre original which might yield interesting results. A closer look at the buildings in the copy would be useful too, when it goes back on show. 

What remains unresolved about the original is why the Palladian- styled villa is illuminated instead of the buildings at the back of Christ, as Bourdon observed. Is this a result of restoration, or is there some other reason?  I haven't been able to check a copy of Rosenberg's 1994 catalogue of the Paris exhibition, which might have additional notes on condition. 

Relevant Literature. (N.B. This isn’t a complete list. If I come across more relevant sources I’ll post them in an update).

Catalogues

Anthony Blunt, Exposition Nicolas Poussin, (Museé du Louvre), 1960, no. 91

Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, (London,1966), no. 74.

Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London, 1984), no. 168.

Various, Catalogue of Paintings in Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 1960.

Various, Foreign Paintings in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, A Summary Catalogue, 1983, no. 117.

Various, Masterpieces of Reality. French Seventeenth Century Painting, Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, 1986. 

Other Literature.

Oskar Bätschmann, Nicolas Poussin: Dialectics of Painting, (London, 1990), 30-39.

Anthony Blunt, Poussin Studies XII: Early Falsifications of Poussin, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 104, no. 716, November 1962, 486-498.

Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (London, 1995, orig. pub. 1967), 238-9.

Elizabeth Cropper, Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting, (Princeton, 1996), 205-215.

Marc Fumaroli, L’Ecole du Silence: Le Sentiment des Images au XVII Siècle, (Paris, 1998), 224f.

David Packwood, unpublished PhD dissertation, Theological and Philosophical Themes in Poussin’s Art, (University of Birmingham, 2005), 267-279.

Patricia Smythe, NICE (National Inventory of Continental European Paintings) record.

 

Welcome to the Poussin Connoisseurship Project.

RATIONALE.

Why do this? Well, the internet revolution is making visual art available to the public in an unprecedented way, and scholars like me are excited by the opportunities this holds for the promotion of our subject. Not only that, but the web is starting to affect the way connoisseurship is practiced. The Poussin Connoisseurship Project positions itself within that new paradigm of digital connoisseurship; it aims to bring the traditional catalogue raisonné into the realms of hyperlinks, digital databases and the expanding universe of art history on the web. We’ll start modestly at first- but who knows? This has the potential to be something bigger.

AIMS

1. To list the paintings on the Public Catalogue Foundation: BBC Your Paintings website (and others) that are not by Poussin’s hand, though linked with him by the curators of these resources. This includes paintings designated as “After”, “Style of”, “School” etc.
2. To use my own expertise and experience as a Poussin scholar to add to the knowledge data base of the PCF, as well as offer an independent resource for anybody interested in the subject.
3. To raise awareness about scholarly issues in Poussin connoisseurship for the general public.  
4. To use this resource as a foundation for larger, more ambitious projects, like cataloguing the paintings on the PCF by Poussin's followers; or even working through Poussin’s oeuvre in a web format.  

FORMAT

The chosen format is derived from a number of conventions and traditions in cataloguing; this may change depending on what works best over time.

TITLE

LOCATION

MEDIUM AND SUPPORT (nearly always oil on canvas in Poussin’s case).

PROVENANCE (History of Ownership).

RELATED WORKS (originals, autograph works, drawings and engravings).

TECHNICAL NOTES (conservation,restoration, condition etc).

THEME.(Mythology, Biblical, whatever).

ADDITIONAL REMARKS

RELEVANT LITERATURE (subdivided into catalogues and other literature).