THINGS that are perfect in some way should not be looked at hastily, but over time, with judgment and intelligence,’ wrote Nicolas Poussin to an official of the court of Louis XIII, in 1642. The artist was 47 and at the height of his powers, acclaimed both in his native France —where, for two years, he had enjoyed the prestigious position of the first painter to the king —and in Rome, to which he shortly returned.
Unusually among the work of French Baroque artists, Poussin’s painting rejected giddy emotionalism in favor of slow appraisal. A cerebral quality characterizes many of his paintings and, often, a stillness suggestive of Classical sculpture. In works such as The Adoration of the Golden Calf of 1633–34 and the densely wrought Hymenaios Disguised as a Woman During an Offering to Priapus, painted shortly afterward, his figurative groups explicitly recall the carved friezes and bas reliefs of ancient Athens and Rome. As in the work of Classical artists, he depicts idealized figures in idyllic surrounds, positioned, in a conceit borrowed from Titian, within a landscape of distant blue mountains. The crisp lines of many of his paintings point to the lasting influence of Raphael, whose work he encountered as a young man in the collection of France’s queen mother, Marie de Médicis, in the newly built Luxembourg Palace. However, viewers have failed to find in Poussin’s carefully rendered set pieces the warmth that typically irradiates Raphael’s serene vision or the vigour of Titian.
Denne historien er fra October 06, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 06, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.