Art Of The Day Weekly
#400 - from 1 October 2015 to 7 October 2015
Poussin, my love
Nicolas Poussin, the paragon of French classicism, has an interesting list of lovers. Among all those who have dedicatd a part of their lives to study him and his work, we see big names like Anthony Blunt, the famous art historien turned spy - or the contrary -, Denis Mahon, Jacques Thuillier or Pierre Rosenberg, the former director of the Louvre, whom we can thank for the large exhibition in 1994. Today he publishes a sort of testament on this subject: his exhaustive study of the Poussin in the large Parisian museum. This is no easy task since there are forty paintings (of which thirty two came from Louis XIV), and this represents almost half of the corpus … The Mars and Venus recently attributed to him is in first place and we finish with another romantic scene, Apollo in love of Daphne. The notes on each work are impressive by the level of knowledge they demonstrate (indicating copies, public sales, mentions in private collections, etc.). But the reader is also so impressed by the work done on the origin of the paintings. These descriptions can be read like a police investigation, like a detective novel that links the 17th century to our time.
• Nicolas Poussin, les tableaux du Louvre, by Pierre Rosenberg, Louvre éditions/Somogy, 2015, 400 p., €39.
