Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
wall, The Rain of Manna, and,
The Philistines smitten by Plague. In 1640, after two years'
negotiations and the personal intervention of Louis XIII., he was
persuaded to return to Paris to take part in the decoration of the
Louvre; but in spite of his generous pay and of the fine _palazzetto_
and charming garden allotted to him for residence, the petty
jealousies, chicanery and low standard of his rivals, revolted his
artistic conscience: he obtained leave to return to Rome "to fetch his
wife," and never left the eternal city again. Two of his works painted
during this second and last Roman period are 717 (L. of entrance),
Institution of the Eucharist, and 735 (L. wall), a ceiling composition
executed for Richelieu, Time rescuing Truth from the assaults of Envy
and Discord, whose subjective interest is obvious; 704, L. of
entrance, Rebecca at the Well, is described at great length by
Felibien, who saw it in progress. It was painted (1648) for a rich
patron who desired a composition treated like Guido's Virgin, and
filled with several young girls of differing types of beauty. The
finished picture so delighted amateurs at Paris that large sums were
offered in vain to divert it from the fortunate possessor; 711, L.
wall, is the famous Judgment of Solomon (1649). On the same wall are
731, Echo and Narcissus; 734, his masterpiece, Shepherds of Arcady--a
group of shepherds of the Vale of Tempe in the heyday of health and
beauty, are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning
inscription on a tomb: _Et in arcadia ego_ (I, too, once lived in
Arcady); 736-739, The Four Seasons were painted (1660-1664) for
Richelieu. These beautiful compositions, more especially the last, The
Deluge, typifying winter, will repay careful study. On the R. wall
are, 724, the well-known Rape of the Sabine Women; 740, a most perfect
work of his maturity, Orpheus and Eurydice (1659); and 742, Apollo and
Daphne, his last work, left unfinished. Such are some of the more
striking manifestations of this remarkable genius who alone, says
Hazlitt, has the right to be considered as the painter of classical
antiquity. His integrity was so rigid that he once returned part of
the price paid for one of his works which he deemed excessive. To
the modern, Poussin is somewhat antipathetic by reason of his
scholarly aloofness and insensibility to the passions and actualities
of life. As Reynolds remarked: he lived and conversed with ancient
statues so long, that he was better acquainted with them than with the
people around him, and had studied the ancients so much, that he had
acquired a habit of thinking in their way. He saw Nature through the
glass of Time, says Hazlitt, and his friend Dom Bonaventura tells how
he often met the solitary artist sketching in the Forum or returning
from the Campagna with specimens of moss, pebbles, flowers, etc., to
be used as models. When asked the secret of his artistic perfection,
he would modestly answer: "_Je n'ai rien neglige._"
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