text stringlengths 0 3.13k |
|---|
Work, style and legacy |
Lancret completed numerous paintings, a significant proportion of which (over eighty) were engraved. Although he completed several portraits and historical pieces his favourite subjects were balls, fairs, village weddings and so forth. In this respect he was typical of Rococo artists. Some have claimed Lancret's work i... |
It is generally considered that the artist produced his best work towards the latter end of his life, displaying, in the minds of several art historians, an increasing ability to create a sense of harmony between art and nature, as in Montreir de lanterne magique, and a willingness to lend his, now bulkier, figures a f... |
The British Museum possesses an admirable series of studies by Lancret in red chalk, and the National Gallery, London, shows four paintings—the "Four Ages of Man" (engraved by Desplaces and l'Armessin), cited by d'Argenville amongst the principal works of Lancret. |
Personal life |
Lancret was single for much of his life; however in 1741 he married the 18-year-old grandchild of Boursault, author of Aesop at Court. Supposedly Lancret was induced to marry her after finding her and her dying mother living in poverty in an attic room and hearing that the daughter was soon to be compelled to enter a c... |
Gallery |
References |
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lancret, Nicolas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 153. |
See d'Argenville, Vies des peintres; and Ballot de Sovot, Éloge de M. Lancret (1743, new ed. 1874). |
Further reading |
General studies |
Adapted from: Freitag, Wolfgang M. (1997) [1985]. Art Books: A Basic Bibliography of Monographs on Artists (2nd ed.). New York, London: Garland. p. 212, entries nos. 6415–6418. ISBN 0-8240-3326-4. |
Reference works |
External links |
38 artworks by or after Nicolas Lancret at the Art UK site |
Nicolas Lancret at the WikiGallery.org |
Nicolas Neufchatel or Neufchâtel (c. 1527 – c. 1590), known as Lucidel, was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. He worked in Germany and was noted as one of the leading portrait painters of the 1560s. |
Life |
The earliest likely reference to Neufchatel occurs in the archives of the Antwerp's Guild of St. Luke, which list a 'Colyn van Nieucasteel' as a student of Pieter Coecke van Aelst in the year 1539. As a student in Antwerp, Neufchatel would have been introduced to the works of Frans Floris, Willem Key, and other masters... |
External links |
Works of Neufchatel at the National Gallery in London |
Works of Neufchatel at Kunst Indeks Danmark |
Nicolas Poussin (UK: , US: ; French: [nikɔla pusɛ̃]; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was a French painter who was a leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a small group of Italian ... |
Details of Poussin's artistic training are somewhat obscure. Around 1612 he traveled to Paris, where he studied under minor masters and completed his earliest surviving works. His enthusiasm for the Italian works he saw in the royal collections in Paris motivated him to travel to Rome in 1624, where he studied the work... |
He was persuaded to return to France in 1640 to be First Painter to the King but, dissatisfied with the overwhelming workload and the court intrigues, returned permanently to Rome after a little more than a year. Among the important works from his later years are Orion Blinded Searching for the Sun, Landscape with Herc... |
Biography |
Early years – Les Andelys and Paris |
Nicolas Poussin's early biographer was his friend Giovanni Pietro Bellori, who relates that Poussin was born near Les Andelys in Normandy and that he received an education that included some Latin, which would stand him in good stead. Another early friend and biographer, André Félibien, reported that "He was busy witho... |
He arrived in Paris during the regency of Marie de Medici, when art was flourishing as a result of the royal commissions given by Marie de Medici for the decoration of her palace, and by the rise of wealthy Paris merchants who bought art. There was also a substantial market for paintings in the redecoration of churches... |
His early sketches gained him a place in the studios of established painters. He worked for three months in the studio of the Flemish painter Ferdinand Elle, who painted almost exclusively portraits, a genre that was of little interest to Poussin. Afterward, he is thought to have studied for one month in the studio of ... |
He first tried to travel to Rome in 1617 or 1618, but made it only as far as Florence, where, as his biographer Bellori reported, "as a result of some sort of accident, he returned to France." On his return, he began making paintings for Paris churches and convents. In 1622 made another attempt to go to Rome, but went ... |
Giambattista Marino, the court poet to Marie de Medici, employed him to make a series of fifteen drawings, eleven illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses and four illustrating battle scenes from Roman history. The "Marino drawings", now at Windsor Castle, are among the earliest identifiable works of Poussin. Marino's influen... |
First residence in Rome (1624–1640) |
Poussin was thirty when he arrived in Rome in 1624. The new Pope, Urban VIII, elected in 1623, was determined to maintain the position of Rome as the artistic capital of Europe, and artists from around the world gathered there. Poussin could visit the churches and convents to study the works of Raphael and other Renais... |
Poussin became acquainted with other artists in Rome and tended to befriend those with classicizing artistic leanings: the French sculptor François Duquesnoy whom he lodged with in 1626 in via dei Maroniti; the French artist Jacques Stella; Claude Lorraine; Domenichino; Andrea Sacchi; and joined an informal academy of ... |
The early years of Poussin in Rome were difficult. His patron Marino departed Rome for Naples in May 1624, shortly after Poussin arrived, and died there in 1625. His other major sponsor, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, was named a papal legate to Spain and also departed soon afterwards, taking Cassiano dal Pozzo with him... |
Cardinal Barberini and Cassiano dal Pozzo returned to Rome in 1626, and by their patronage Poussin received two major commissions. In 1627, Poussin painted The Death of Germanicus (Minneapolis Institute of Arts) for Cardinal Barberini. The painting's erudite use of ancient textual and visual sources (the Histories of T... |
The success of the Germanicus led to an even more prestigious commission in 1628 for an altarpiece depicting the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus, for the Erasmus Chapel in the basilica of St. Peter's (now in the Vatican Pinacoteca). The Fabricca di San Pietro had originally awarded the commission to Pietro da Cortona, who had... |
With its plunging diagonal composition and high narrative drama, the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus is Poussin's most overtly "baroque" work. Despite its adherence to the pictorial idiom of the day, for unknown reasons, the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus seems to have met with official displeasure and generated no further papal co... |
Along with Cardinal Barberini and Cassiano dal Pozzo, for whom he painted the first Seven Sacraments series, Poussin's early private patrons included the Chanoine Gian Maria Roscioli, who bought The Young Pyrrhus Saved and several other important works; Cardinal Rospigliosi, for whom he painted the second version of Th... |
Buoyed by this commercial success, Poussin bought a life interest in a small house on Via Paolina (Babuino) for his wife and himself in 1632 and entered his most productive period. His house was at the foot of Trinité des Monts, near the city gate, where other foreigners and artists lived; its exact location is not kno... |
Return to France (1641–42) |
As the work of Poussin became well known in Rome, he received invitations to return to Paris for important royal commissions, proposed by Sublet de Noyers, the Superintendent of buildings for Louis XIII. When Poussin declined, Noyers sent his cousins, Roland Fréart de Chambray and Paul Fréart, to Rome to persuade Pouss... |
The correspondence of Poussin to Cassiano dal Pozzo and his other friends in Rome show that he was appreciative of the money and honors, but he was quickly overwhelmed by a large number of commissions, particularly since he had taken the habit of working slowly and carefully. His new projects included The Institution o... |
Final years in Rome (1642–1665) |
When he returned to Rome in 1642, he found the art world was in transition. Pope Urban VIII died in 1644, and the new Pope, Innocent X, was less interested in art patronage, and preferred Spanish over French culture. Poussin's great patrons, the Barberinis, departed Rome for France. He still had a few important patrons... |
In 1647, André Félibien, the secretary of the French Embassy in Rome, became a friend and painting student of Poussin, and published the first book devoted entirely to his work. His growing number of French patrons included the Abbé Louis Fouquet, brother of Nicolas Fouquet, the celebrated superintendent of finances of... |
Another important French patron of Poussin in this period was Paul Fréart de Chantelou, who came to Rome in 1643 and stayed there for several months. He commissioned from Poussin some of his most important works, including the second series of the Seven Sacraments, painted between 1644 and 1648, and his Landscape with ... |
He lived an austere and comfortable life, working slowly and apparently without assistants. The painter Charles Le Brun joined him in Rome for three years, and Poussin's work had a major influence on Le Brun's style. In 1647, his patrons Chantelou and Pointel requested portraits of Poussin. He responded by making two s... |
He suffered from declining health after 1650, and was troubled by a worsening tremor in his hand, evidence of which is apparent in his late drawings. Nonetheless, in his final eight years he painted some of the most ambitious and celebrated of his works, including The Birth of Bacchus, Orion Blinded Searching for the S... |
His wife Anne-Marie died in 1664, and thereafter his own health sank rapidly. On 21 September he dictated his will, and he died in Rome on 19 November 1665 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. |
Subjects |
Each of Poussin's paintings told a story. Though he had little formal education, Poussin became very knowledgeable in the nuances of religious history, mythology and classical literature, and, usually after consulting with his clients, took his subjects from these topics. Many of his paintings combined several differen... |
Religion |
Religion was the most common subject of his paintings, as the church was the most important art patron in Rome and because there was a growing demand by wealthy patrons for devotional paintings at home. He took a large part of his themes from the Old Testament, which offered more variety and the stories were often more... |
His religious paintings were sometimes criticized by his rivals for their variation from tradition. His painting of Christ in the sky in his painting of Saint Francis-Xavier was criticized by partisans of Simon Vouet for having "Too much pride, and resembling the god Jupiter more than a God of Mercy". Poussin responded... |
The most famous of his religious works were the two series called The Seven Sacraments, representing the meaning of the moral laws behind each of the principal ceremonies of the church, illustrated by incidents in the life of Christ. The first series was painted in Rome by his major early patron, Cassiano dal Pozzo, an... |
Mythology and classical literature |
Classical Greek and Roman mythology, history and literature provided the subjects for many of his paintings, particularly during his early years in Rome. His first successful painting in Rome, The Death of Germanicus, was based upon a story in the Annals of Tacitus. In his early years he devoted a series of paintings, ... |
Throughout his career, Poussin frequently achieved what the art historian Willibald Sauerländer terms a "consonance ... between the pagan and the Christian world". An example is The Four Seasons (1660–64), in which Christian and pagan themes are mingled: Spring, traditionally personified by the Roman goddess Flora, ins... |
In his later years, his mythological paintings became more somber, and often introduced the symbols of mortality and death. The last painting he was working on before his death was Apollo in love with Daphne, which he presented to his patron, the future Cardinal Massimi, in 1665. The figures on the left of the canvas, ... |
Poetry and allegory |
Besides classical literature and myth, he drew often from works of the romantic and heroic literature of his own time, usually subjects decided in advance with his patrons. He painted scenes from the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), published in 1581, and one of the most popular books in Pou... |
Allegories of death are common in Poussin's work. One of the best-known examples is Et in Arcadia ego, a subject he painted in about 1630 and again in the late 1630s. Idealized shepherds examine a tomb inscribed with the title phrase, "Even in Arcadia I exist", reminding that death was ever-present. |
A fertile source for Poussin was Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi, who wrote moralistic theatrical pieces which were staged at the Palace Barberini, his early patron. One of his most famous works, A Dance to the Music of Time, was inspired by another Rospigliosi piece. According to his early biographers Bellori and Felibien... |
Landscapes and townscapes |
Poussin is an important figure in the development of landscape painting. In his early paintings the landscape usually forms a graceful background for a group of figures, but later the landscape played a larger and larger role and dominated the figures, illustrating stories, usually tragic, taken from the Bible, mytholo... |
Between 1650 and 1655, Poussin also painted a series of paintings now often called "townscapes", where classical architecture replaces trees and mountains in the background. The painting The Death of Saphire uses this setting to illustrate two stories simultaneously; in the foreground, the wife of a wealthy merchant di... |
Style and method |
Throughout his life Poussin stood apart from the popular tendency toward the decorative in French art of his time. In Poussin's works a survival of the impulses of the Renaissance is coupled with conscious reference to the art of classical antiquity as the standard of excellence. Rejecting the emotionalism of Baroque a... |
During the late 1620s and 1630s, he experimented and formulated his own style. He studied the Antique as well as works such as Titian's Bacchanals (The Bacchanal of the Andrians, Bacchus and Ariadne, and The Worship of Venus) at the Casino Ludovisi and the paintings of Domenichino and Guido Reni. |
In contrast to the warm and atmospheric style of his early paintings, Poussin by the 1630s developed a cooler palette, a drier touch, and a more stage-like presentation of figures dispersed within a well defined space. In The Triumph of David (c. 1633–34; Dulwich Picture Gallery), the figures enacting the scene are arr... |
Contrary to the standard studio practice of his time, Poussin did not make detailed figure drawings as preparation for painting, and he seems not to have used assistants in the execution of his paintings. He produced few drawings as independent works, aside from the series of drawings illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses ... |
Legacy |
In the years following Poussin's death, his style had a strong influence on French art, thanks in particular to Charles Le Brun, who had studied briefly with Poussin in Rome, and who, like Poussin, became a court painter for the King and later the head of the French Academy in Rome. Poussin's work had an important infl... |
A debate emerged in the art world between the advocates of Poussin's style, who said the drawing was the most important element of a painting, and the advocates of Rubens, who placed color above the drawing. During the French Revolution, Poussin's style was championed by Jacques-Louis David in part because the leaders ... |
The 19th century brought a resurgence of enthusiasm for Poussin. French writers were seeking to create a national art movement and Poussin became one of their heroes: the founding father of the French School; he appears in plays, stories and novels as well as physiognomic studies. He also became the model for the myth ... |
Cézanne appreciated Poussin's version of classicism. "Imagine how Poussin entirely redid nature, that is the classicism that I mean. What I don't accept is the classicism that limits you. I want that a visit to a master will help me find myself. Every time I leave a Poussin, I know better who I am." Cézanne was describ... |
In the 20th century, some art critics suggested that the analytic Cubist experiments of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were also founded upon Poussin's example. In 1963 Picasso based a series of paintings on Poussin's The Rape of the Sabine Women. André Derain, Jean Hélion, Balthus, and Jean Hugo were other modern ar... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.