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To say nothing on this occasion of Albani, Poussin, and the Flemish sculptors of the seventeenth century, with Du Quesnoy and Van Opstal at their head, Rubens and Van Dyck derived their chief inspiration in similar subjects from these Loves of Titian.
Afterwards we find the same position of the Virgin in pictures by Vandyck, Poussin, and other painters of the seventeenth century. It is quite an innovation on the old religious arrangement; but in the utter absence of all religious feeling, the mere arrangement of the figures, except in an artistic point of view, is of little consequence.
His father, Jean Poussin, had served in the regiment of Tauannes during the reigns of Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., without having risen to any higher rank than that of lieutenant.
What would he have said, if any one had told him he could get as good an idea of the subject of one of his great works from reading the Catalogue of it, as from seeing the picture itself? Yet the answer was characteristic of the genius of the painter. Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears to have revelled in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it, and may again.
After this, it is not extraordinary that pictures should be dear. We have at present three exhibitions. One West, who paints history in the taste of Poussin, gets three hundred pounds for a piece not too large to hang over a chimney. He has merit, but is hard and heavy, and far unworthy of such prices.
So it was said of Nicholas Poussin, the painter, that the rule of his conduct was, that "whatever was worth doing at all was worth doing well;" and when asked, late in life, by his friend Vigneul de Marville, by what means he had gained so high a reputation among the painters of Italy, Poussin emphatically answered, "Because I have neglected nothing."
"But sooner or later, he will perceive that there is nothing there," cried Poussin. "Nothing there! upon my canvas?" said Frenhofer, looking first at the two painters, and then at his imaginary picture. "What have you done?" cried Porbus, addressing Poussin. The old man seized the arm of the young man violently, and said to him, "You see nothing? clown, infidel, scoundrel, dolt!
He worked with such passionate ardor that the sweat rolled in great drops from his bald brow; and his motions seemed to be jerked out of him with such rapidity and impatience that the young Poussin fancied a demon, encased with the body of this singular being, was working his hands fantastically like those of a puppet without, or even against, the will of their owner.
It required two persons to eat a strawberry, and four to consume a pear. The grapes also attained the enormous proportions of those so well depicted by Poussin in his "Return of the Envoys to the Promised Land."
"See, he is talking to his own soul," said Porbus in a low voice. The words acted like a spell on Nicolas Poussin, filling him with the inexplicable curiosity of a true artist.
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