Artists fall in and out of fashion all the time, that is the way of the canon, an artist who has been admired in equal measure from their own time to the present day is a rare thing indeed. Nicolas Poussin (1594 – 1665) is one such artist. Lorded by his contemporary Bernini as the only French artist who really mattered, he won posthumous favour with both Ingres and Delacroix (possibly the only thing on which those two agreed), as well as Cezanne who said he only truly understood himself after spending time with a Poussin. Even the wunderkind of Modernism, Pablo Picasso, was known to copy Poussin’s works.
So, just what is it about this seventeenth-century, neoclassical painter that keeps us coming back? For me, he has always held some mysterious quality that leaves one distinctly unsettled, in the way that most truly great art does. The scene of the Eucharist from his first series of The Seven Sacraments embodies this feeling nicely. It is very dark, one has to get very close to it before the twelve disciples and the Christ appear from the gloom, this is not one of those oversized baroque canvases that have to be taken in from the other side of the room. To add to the sense of mystery, the figure of Christ sat at the centre of the work is one of the most spectacular in all art, his place, shadowy face evoking the impressions left on the Turin Shroud.
Further unease is brought by the oil lamp, hovering above the head of Christ like a kind of holy dove, it is clearly lit but seemingly gives no light to the scene, its tiny flames flicker against the thick darkness. To the left a figure is caught half way through a doorway, face obscured. Who are they? Where are they going? Suddenly we are reminded of a world beyond this gloomy room.
We have been conditioned to think of the last supper in Leonardian terms. A light-filled, airy, triumphal party, displayed for our observation. Poussin’s supper takes place behind closed doors, in a dark, private room suitable for the illegal cult that Christianity then was. Our vantage point is voyeuristic, we have not been invited to this supper and we do not need to know what they are discussing. The scene like a meeting in the back-room of a restaurant glimpsed through a swinging door.
The uncomfortable pressure makes us want to follow that figure out of the door. And yet we don’t. Something keeps us watching. What we see is just too mystical, too mysterious, to look away. It’s that power which makes this painting one of the most profoundly moving religious images ever created – and that’s coming from an atheist. I can convince myself that it was indeed how the last supper looked, something that Leonardo has never done for me.
The more Poussin you see, the more you want to see – his works are addictive . The key is that he always seems to paint just the moment before you think he would, upbeat to the actual moment of action or revelation. Thus his works have a wonderful sense of irresolution, he brings you to the precipice and then asks you to jump. His narratives are never completed on the canvas but rather in the mind of the viewer.
Take his Adoration of the Golden Calf from the National Gallery, he hasn’t given us the moment of the most drama, we do not see Moses smash the graven image but rather a scene just moments before as the pagans continue to dance just as Moses arrives on the scene (he’s left the carrying of the stone tablets to his lackeys seen on the far left!). The viewer knows what comes next and so does Poussin, so there’s no need for him to show it. Instead he can give us the satisfaction of painting our own conclusion in our minds’ eye.
Again, in his Massacre of the Innocents, we get the moment just before the resolution, the leading note of the cadence left unresolved. The child is pinned down, the mother wails, the sword is swung….but that’s as far as he takes us, we’re on our own for the rest. A biblical cliffhanger.
Unconventionally he only shows us one attack, not the usual chaotic massacre on a huge scale. Yet, with just an isolated example Poussin is able to convey all the emotional tension of the story. Knowing the story, our minds automatically amplify the sorrow to the scale of the massacre.
Poussin was born in Normandy but spent virtually his whole career in Rome, then the centre of the art world, as the leader of a devoted gang of expatriate neoclassical painters. He was the foil to Caravaggio, whose gritty realism he abhorred. Poussin was for line over colour, design over hyperbolic drama, and most of all, clarity of the style – no gushing baroque fripperies for him.
Towards the end of his life he turned towards landscape and many old masters did. Scenes of the Roman campagna with classical temples and wooded lakes became the idiom for some of his last great works. After his death they gained such respect that still to this day the French often refer to a blue sky with small, dark clouds with sunlight edges as ‘a Poussin sky’.
One of the most intriguing of these late works is Landscape with a Man Killed by A Snake. First you are enchanted by a peaceful, Arcadian landscape, then you see the startled expression on the man’s face and remember the strangeness of the title. Finally your eyes fall to the dark bottom left corner and spot the horrifying scene – a black/blue corpse wrapped in the black, writhing bands of a giant snake.It’s a painting that gives you whiplash, lulling you into a pleasant calm before slipping a horse’s head into your bed.
Poussin doesn’t paint the moment of attack or even the moment of death, but rather the instant of discovery, the man sees but the woman has only heard his cry of surprise. Her obviousness and his startled discovery mirror our own journey of realisation.
That is the wonder of Poussin, and that is why we keep coming back to him. His paintings play games with us, they give us half the story or just a hint at a narrative, they hold your hand so far and then push you out into your own imagination. You always come away from a Poussin with more questions than answers, and that is why his works still hold so much power, that stand up to viewing, and reviewing, and viewing again. It is very hard to be passive in front of a Poussin, while it sits on the wall begging to be resolved.
Morgan Haigh 