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 22nd 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, 20th July, 1850, lot 9; Samuel Woodburn Sale, Christie’s, London, 24th 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, 3rd June, 1856, lot 61; T Kibble sale, Christie’s London, 5th 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 17th 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 14th 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.
