Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 2Turner, Dawson
History
Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 2
Turner, Dawson
Architecture -- France -- Normandy; Normandy (France) -- Antiquities; Normandy (France) -- Description and travel
by a double buttress, and the tabernacles affixed to these are filled
with statues. The basement of the oriel, which projects from the flat
wall of the house, after the fashion of a bartizan, is divided into
compartments, studded with medallions, and intermixed with tracery of
great variety and beauty. On either side of the bay, there are flying
buttresses of elaborate sculpture, spreading along the wall.--As,
comparatively speaking, good models of ancient domestic architecture are
very rare, I would particularly recommend this at Andelys to the notice
of every architect, whom chance may conduct to Normandy.--This building,
like too many others of the same class in our own counties of Norfolk
and Suffolk, is degraded from its station. The _great house_ is used
merely as a granary, though, by a very small expence, it might be put
into habitable repair. The stone retains its clear and polished surface;
and the massy timbers are undecayed.--The inside corresponds with the
exterior, in decorations and grandeur: the chimney-pieces are large and
elaborate, and there is abundance of sculpture on the ceilings and other
parts which admit of ornament.
The French, in speaking of Andelys, commonly use the plural number, and
say, _les Andelys_, there being a smaller town of the same name, within
the distance of a mile: hence, the larger, all inconsiderable as it is,
and though it scarcely contains two thousand inhabitants, is dignified
by the appellation of _le Grand Andelys_.
As the French seldom neglect the memory of their eminent men, I was
rather disappointed at not finding any tribute to the glory of Poussin,
nor any object which could recal his name.--The great master of the
French school was born at Andelys, in 1594, of poor but noble parents.
The talents of the painter of the _Deluge_ overcame all obstacles. Young
Poussin, with barely a sufficiency to buy his daily bread, found means
of making his abilities known in the metropolis to such advantage, as
enabled him to proceed to Rome, where the patronage of the Cavaliere
Marino smoothed his way to that splendid career, which terminated only
with his life.--And yet I doubt if the example of Poussin has, on the
whole, been favorable to the progress of French art. Horace Walpole, in
his summary of the excellencies and defects of great painters, observed
with much justice, that "Titian wanted to have seen the antique; Poussin
to have seen Titian." The observation referred principally to the
defective coloring, which is admitted to exist in the greater part of
the works of the painter of Andelys. But Poussin, considered as a model
for imitation, and especially as a model for the student, is liable to a
more serious objection.--He was a total stranger to real
nature:--classical taste, indeed, and knowledge, and grace, and beauty,
pervade all his works; but it is a taste, and a knowledge, and a grace,
and a beauty, formed solely upon the contemplation of the antique.
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