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| Nicolas Poussin Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites ca. 1625-26 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
HISTORY: Presumably the painting and its pair [directly below] are the two battle-pieces executed, according to [Giovanni Pietro] Bellori, during the absence from Rome of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, i.e. between March 1625 and October 1626. Mentioned in 1685 by [André] Félibien and in 1700 by Florent Le Comte as belonging to the Duc de Noailles, that is to say Anne Jules de Noailles, Marshal of France, who died in 1708. Presumably inherited by his eldest son, Adrien Maurice, also a Marshal of France (died 1766), who may have sold it, since it does not appear in the sale of his collection in 1767 after his death. Almost certainly François de Dufresne sale, Winter, Amsterdam, 1770. Bought by the Empress Catherine II of Russia before 1774.
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| Nicolas Poussin Victory of Joshua over the Amorites ca. 1625-26 oil on canvas Pushkin Museum, Moscow |
HISTORY: The Victory of Joshua over the Amorites remained as a pair with the Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites up to their arrival at the Hermitage by 1774. The Amorites painting alone was transferred to the Pushkin Museum in 1927.
"The two battle pieces now in Russia are composed on the same principles as the drawings of early Roman battles made in Paris, though the paintings actually represent episodes from the wanderings of the Children of Israel. . . . The piled-up high-relief composition, without space or air, is still influenced by engravings of the school of Raphael, but no doubt received a new stimulus toward this kind of treatment from the many late Roman representations of battles [Poussin] would have seen in Rome."
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| Nicolas Poussin Victory of Gideon over the Midianites ca. 1625-26 oil on canvas Vatican Pinacoteca, Rome |
HISTORY: Nothing is known of the history of this painting, except that it came from the papal palace at Castel Gandolfo. It is possible, however, that it belonged in the eighteenth century to the Farnese family, for a painting, described as a battle and attributed to Poussin, was sold to them in 1710 by C.A. Canopi and is mentioned by Dézallier d'Argenville as "petit morceau précieux." It is not now traceable in the records of the Farnese collection either in Naples or at Parma. It may have remained in Rome and have been disposed of when the main collections were moved from the Palazzo Farnese to Naples.
"[Giovanni Pietro] Bellori only speaks of two battle scenes, but a third is known in the Vatican Gallery which is identical in format and must belong to the same series, though it is much darker in tone and smoother in handling. . . . It is unique among Poussin's works in being a night scene. . . . The subject is taken from [the book of] Judges, [chapter] VII. The painting was discovered and identified as a Poussin by M. [Jacques] Thuillier. My own first reaction was to doubt the attribution, but after seeing once more the two Russian battle-pieces, I came round to M. Thuillier's view."
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| formerly attributed to Nicolas Poussin The Adoration of the Golden Calf 1626 oil on canvas Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco M.H. de Young Memorial Museum |
HISTORY: In 1919 the San Francisco picture was with the Sackville Gallery, London, and was said to have belonged previously to the Earl of Harewood, and then to have been in the Estate of Rudolph Bottenwieser. After being sold by the Sackville Gallery it was in the E. May collection, Paris. Later it was with Heinemann, New York, from whom it was bought by the Kress Foundation and presented to the de Young Museum in 1952.
"In the Golden Calf, which is probably of 1626, the method is different again. In its general arrangement of the figures in a bas-relief sequence the composition is like the two Children's Bacchanals, but the background introduced an essential novelty in showing a landscape conceived in Titianesque terms and recalling especially that in the Andrians, with its dramatically lit hills and stormy sky. In many ways this landscape looks forward to Poussin's paintings of about 1630, but the clumsiness of certain figures, notably the boy pouring the offering on the right, confirms the date 1626 rather than 1629." [Blunt later rejected this version of the Golden Calf, and the Museum now lists it as a work by Andrea di Lione].
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| Nicolas Poussin The Adoration of the Golden Calf ca. 1627-28 oil on canvas (fragment) private collection |
HISTORY: Almost certainly a fragment of a picture representing The Adoration of the Golden Calf painted for an unnamed Neapolitan patron. [André] Félibien, who records its existence, says that it was damaged in the Masaniello revolt of 1647, but that a fragment was saved and brought to Rome, when he saw it between 1647 and 1649. [This] painting belonged to the Earls of Carlisle and passed by inheritance to George Howard; his sale, Christie, London, 1944 (as by Guido Reni); bought Wengraf; bought from him by Cecil Liddell and passed by inheritance in turn to his two brothers, Guy and David Liddell, and to his niece.
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| Nicolas Poussin Moses sweetening the Bitter Waters of Marah ca. 1627-28 oil on canvas Baltimore Museum of Art |
HISTORY: Perhaps belonged to André Le Nôtre (died 1700); in the first half of the eighteenth century it belonged to an unidentified Dr. Hickman, who sold it through Knapton, presumably the painter George Knapton, to Blackwood; bought from him by Sir Joshua Reynolds; Rawdon and others sale, Cock, London, 1744; bought Bragge; after passing through "several hands" it was bought by Simon, first Earl Harcourt in 1755; Harcourt sale, Christie, London, 1948; bought Knoedler; bought by the Baltimore Museum from Knoedler, 1958.
"The subject, very rarely depicted in the art of the Middle Ages or later, is taken from [the book of] Exodus, [chapter] XV, [verses] 23-26. The latter history of the picture can largely be reconstructed from a letter written by Rebecca, Countess Harcourt, to her son in September 1755: "I must tell you we lately bought one of N. Poussin's pictures (Moses sweetening the waters of Maribah). 'Tis painted after the manner of Raphael; and, though a little dark, is esteemed by the best judges to be a capital picture. Knapton sold it some years ago for Dr. Hickman to Blackwood; he sold it to Lord Royden and, after passing through several hands, my Lord was so fortunate as to get it."
HISTORY: Bought by Augustus III of Saxony in 1741 from the Parisian collector Poincinet through de Brais. Presumably the painting seen by James Thornhill in Paris in 1717, and perhaps that mentioned by Loménie de Brienne as belonging to Mme. d'Aligre. . . . Mme. d'Aligre's paintings had previously belonged to the painter Nicolas Quesnel.
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| Nicolas Poussin The Exposition of Moses ca. 1627-29 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie, Dresden |
HISTORY: Bought by Augustus III of Saxony in 1741 from the Parisian collector Poincinet through de Brais. Presumably the painting seen by James Thornhill in Paris in 1717, and perhaps that mentioned by Loménie de Brienne as belonging to Mme. d'Aligre. . . . Mme. d'Aligre's paintings had previously belonged to the painter Nicolas Quesnel.
"The Exposing of Moses in Dresden . . . contains a mixture of Roman, Venetian, and ancient elements: the poses of the front figures are taken from Raphael, but they are constructed like ancient marbles, while the color is still in the manner of Titian. The strangest feature in the painting is the series of jumps in scale between the river god in the foreground, the figures just behind him, and the group on the other side of the river."
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| Nicolas Poussin The Triumph of David begun 1628-30 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
HISTORY: Reproduced in an engraving by S.F. Ravenet in 1776, which bears the arms of John Joshua Proby, second Lord Carysfort. At an unspecified date soon after 1787 Lord Carysfort sold the painting to Charles Alexandre de Calonne, at whose sale (Skinner and Dyke, London, 1795) it was bought by Noël Desenfans. At his death in 1807 it passed with the whole collection to his friend, Sir Francis Bourgeois, who bequeathed it, together with his other pictures, to Dulwich College in 1811 [whose art collection passed to the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1817].
"The Triumph of David at Dulwich presents many difficulties from the point of view of dating, since it seems to have stood about in Poussin's studio for some years and to have been worked on over a long period. . . . It has often been said that this painting shows the influence of Domenichino, particularly in it composition and in the architectural setting. It is true that the generally light and blond tone of the painting is like Domenichino's frescoes on the vault of Sant' Andrea della Valle, and that the placing of the temple, with the little figures between the columns of the portico, recalls his Flagellation of St. Andrew, but there is in fact a closer model for the composition in one of the tapestries of the Triumph of Scipio woven for Francis I from the designs of Giulio Romano."
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| Nicolas Poussin The Triumph of David ca. 1628-30 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
HISTORY: Mentioned by [Giovanni Pietro] Bellori in the Nota delli Musei, published anonymously in 1664, as belonging to Monsignor Girolamo Casanate; described in detail in the Vite of 1672, where it is stated to be still in the possession of the same prelate. Acquired by the painter Carlo Maratta (died 1713), and bought from his heirs by Philip V of Spain, in whose collection at La Granja it is recorded in 1746.
"The Triumph of David in the Prado has the same brilliant painting of the armour as the Germanicus. With the Louvre Narcissus it has in common the unusually large scale of the figures in relation to the whole canvas and the cold flesh tones that go back to the early battles pieces."
HISTORY: [Joachim van] Sandrart lists this picture among those ordered in Rome for the King of Spain, but Miss [Jane] Costello has shown that this assertion is false and that the painting was begun at the end of 1630 and bought from Poussin's studio early in 1631 by [Fabritio] Valguarnera for 110 scudi. Between 1647 and 1649 the picture belonged to a Roman sculptor referred to as "Matteo," probably Carlo Matteo, who worked under [Gianlorenzo] Bernini in Rome. Acquired by the Duc de Richelieu and sold by him to Louis XIV in 1665.
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| Nicolas Poussin The Plague at Ashdod 1630-31 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: [Joachim van] Sandrart lists this picture among those ordered in Rome for the King of Spain, but Miss [Jane] Costello has shown that this assertion is false and that the painting was begun at the end of 1630 and bought from Poussin's studio early in 1631 by [Fabritio] Valguarnera for 110 scudi. Between 1647 and 1649 the picture belonged to a Roman sculptor referred to as "Matteo," probably Carlo Matteo, who worked under [Gianlorenzo] Bernini in Rome. Acquired by the Duc de Richelieu and sold by him to Louis XIV in 1665.
"For the years 1630-31 several firm points are supplied by the depositions made in the prosecution of Fabritio Valguarnera, a Spaniard who had stolen a collection of diamonds and used part of them to acquire paintings from Roman and Neapolitan artists. In March 1631 Poussin delivered to him the Plague at Ashdod, which he had begun in 1630. . . . In choosing the plague at Ashdod as the theme for a painting, Poussin was following a long tradition which made of it a type of salvation, but it may also have been brought to his mind by a contemporary event, the terrible plague that struck Milan in 1629. In any case, he follows with the greatest precision the story of the plague at Ashdod as told in I Samuel, [chapter] 5. On the left of the painting the Ark of the Covenant is shown in the temple of Dagon, and in front of it, the statue of the god thrown down: "And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him." Poussin follows every detail of this account. The time of day is indicated by the long shadows and the dim light; the statue of the god is shown thrown down and with the head and one hand broken off and lying on a ledge below."
"But, if Poussin has been careful in following the biblical story, he has combined with it elements taken from classical literature. The group in the foreground with the man stooping down to take the child from the dead mother's breast is inspired by Pliny's description of a painting by Aristides representing the capture of a town, in which the same motive occurs. It was, of course, familiar in Renaissance art, since it had been used by Ghirlandaio in his Massacre of the Innocents, and was made even more popular by Marcantonio's engraving of the plague of the Phrygians, called the Morbetto, which Poussin no doubt knew."
HISTORY: Painted for Amadeo dal Pozzo, Marchese di Voghera, cousin of Cassiano dal Pozzo, with its pendant, the Adoration of the Golden Calf [directly below]; still in his palace in Turin in the 1670's; both pictures were in the collection of the Chevalier de Lorraine (died 1702) by 1684, when the Golden Calf was engraved by E. Baudet; apparently in the Hôtel de Bretonvilliers in 1713; bought through Samuel Paris in 1741 by Sir Jacob Bouverie; by descent to the Earls of Radnor; sold 1945 to Agnew's; bought from them by the National Gallery [of Victoria] in 1948.
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| Nicolas Poussin The Crossing of the Red Sea ca. 1635-37 oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
HISTORY: Painted for Amadeo dal Pozzo, Marchese di Voghera, cousin of Cassiano dal Pozzo, with its pendant, the Adoration of the Golden Calf [directly below]; still in his palace in Turin in the 1670's; both pictures were in the collection of the Chevalier de Lorraine (died 1702) by 1684, when the Golden Calf was engraved by E. Baudet; apparently in the Hôtel de Bretonvilliers in 1713; bought through Samuel Paris in 1741 by Sir Jacob Bouverie; by descent to the Earls of Radnor; sold 1945 to Agnew's; bought from them by the National Gallery [of Victoria] in 1948.
"Poussin was following Josephus (Antiquitates) in showing the children of Israel taking the armour from the bodies of the dead Egyptians being washed up on the shore. . . . In the Red Sea he cannot make use of architecture . . . and instead, he constructs his foreground by means of sculptural groups, which by the decrease in their scale and the degradation of their color lead the eye into the middle distance. At this point, Poussin establishes a sort of caesura by the insertion of a small ledge of rock, but he preserves spatial continuity by the chain of figures near the shore on the right, which moves up to the group standing on the ledge. These, by their various attitudes of dancing, praying, or playing musical instruments, give thanks to God for the miracle worked in their favour. The spatial logic is continued still further through the hills and along the coastline, ending finally in the great mass of black cloud that had hovered over the children of Israel since their departure from Egypt. . . . The individual figures in the foreground show how completely Poussin has mastered the drawing and modeling of the late Raphael and Giulio Romano, and yet at the same time the painting preserves much of the beauty of color and handling that characterized the Titianesque paintings of the years 1629-32."
HISTORY: In the possession of the Duc d'Orléans by 1727; sold with the Italian and French pictures of the Orléans collection to Walkuers in 1792; sold by him the same year to Laborde de Méréville; bought 1798 by Bryan for a group of English collectors; exhibited by Bryan, 1798; bought by the Duke of Bridgewater; by descent to the Earls of Ellesmere and so to the Duke of Sutherland; on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland since 1946.
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| Nicolas Poussin The Adoration of the Golden Calf ca. 1634-35 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
HISTORY: The version of the Golden Calf painted in the mid-1630's remained as a pair with the Crossing of the Red Sea until 1945, when both were put on the market at Agnew's in London. At that point the two paintings went to separate museum purchasers, the Red Sea to Australia, and the Golden Calf to the National Gallery in London.
"The Golden Calf is equally bold, but in a different way. Here Poussin has attempted something that is very rare in his work, the depiction of figures in violent movement. The result is singular, particularly if we compare it with the treatment of a similar group by a Baroque painter. In Rubens' Peasant Dance [directly below], for instance, the movement is continuous and leads from one figure to another, so that the rhythm of the whole dance sweeps across the canvas. In Poussin, the effect is the opposite: each figure performs its own separate action, each is in a pose of active movement, but the effect of the whole is static, as if the figures were frozen into marble. In certain respects this method is based on classical models. In a typical Roman rendering of dancing figures, such as the Borghese relief [also below], which Poussin certainly knew, the figures each have an individual movement, which does not lead on to that of their neighbors, as in the Baroque version. The effect of dancing is given by the repetition of a pose with slight variations, which carries the eye through the group and produces a grave and contained rhythm. In Poussin's dance, however, each figure is in a different pose and, what is more important, each of them is at the extreme point of his action. In fact, their legs are at the one stage where they are not moving at all; they are at the end of a movement forward, just about to begin the back swing and thus at a moment of instantaneous rest. That is to say, Poussin has chosen the action which gives the clearest definition of the movement and marks its full extent, but one which does not give the impression of movement nearly so effectively as the moderate halfway pose of, say, the Borghese dancers. It is typical of Poussin – and foreshadows his highly rationalistic art of the 1640's – that he should prefer what seems to be the logical statement of a movement to one which conveys the impression of movement to the eye."
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| Peter Paul Rubens Peasant Dance ca. 1630-35 oil on panel Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Hellenistic Roman Sculptor The Borghese Dancers 2nd century AD marble relief Musée du Louvre |
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| Nicolas Poussin The Finding of Moses 1638 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Painted in 1638; later belonged to André Le Nôtre; given by him to Louis XIV in September 1693.
"The device of combining architecture and landscape is carried still further in the Finding of Moses of 1638, where the river landscape is closed by a bridge running parallel with the plane of the picture, its line being echoed by the boat in front of it which makes an almost equally firm horizontal. . . . The figure group [is] clearly separated from the landscape, which acts as a background to [it]."
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| Nicolas Poussin Moses Striking the Rock ca. 1637 oil on canvas Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
HISTORY: In the possession of the Duc d'Orléans by 1727; sold with the Italian and French pictures of the Orléans collection to Walkuers in 1792; sold by him the same year to Laborde de Méréville; bought 1798 by Bryan for a group of English collectors; exhibited by Bryan, 1798; bought by the Duke of Bridgewater; by descent to the Earls of Ellesmere and so to the Duke of Sutherland; on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland since 1946.
"Paintings like the Ellesmere-Sutherland Moses Striking the Rock . . . lead up to the transformation of Poussin's compositions which takes place in the late 1630's, by means of which the figure groups expand in depth and become absorbed into the landscape instead of standing free in front of it. This has already been mentioned in connection with the Crossing of the Red Sea, but it reaches its most complete statement in the Israelites Gathering the Manna [directly below], with the result that figure groups and landscape are for the first time completely fused."
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| Nicolas Poussin The Israelites Gathering the Manna 1638-39 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Painted for Paul Fréart de Chantelou; in a letter of 19.iii.1639 Poussin announced that it was finished, but it must have been begun the year before. . . . Chantelou presumably sold the picture to Nicolas Fouquet, who is mentioned by Chantelou in 1665 as having owned it; probably seized when Fouquet was disgraced in 1661; certainly in the royal collection by 1667, when it was the subject of a lecture delivered to the Academy by Charles Lebrun.
"[According to Poussin], "just as the twenty-four letters of the alphabet are used to form our words and to express our thoughts, so the forms of the human body are used to express the various passions of the soul and to make visible what is in the mind." Poussin develops the theme in greater detail in connection with the painting of the Israelites Gathering the Manna. When he is planning the composition he writes to [Jacques] Stella: "I have found a certain distribution . . . and certain natural attitudes which show the misery and hunger to which the Jewish people had been reduced, and also the joy and happiness which came over them, the astonishment which had struck them, and the respect and veneration which they feel for their law-giver, with a mixture of women, children, and men, of different ages and temperaments – things which will, I believe, not displease those who know how to read them." There are two points worth noticing in this passage. First, Poussin does not say "will not displease those who know how to look at them," but "those who know how to read them," and the same phrase occurs again in the letter he wrote to Chantelou when he actually sent him the painting: "If you will remember the first letter which I wrote you, about the movements that I proposed to give to the figures, and, if at the same time, you will look at the painting, I think you will easily recognize those who are languishing from hunger, those who are struck with amazement, those who are taking pity on their companions and performing acts of charity. . . . Read the story and the picture so that you can judge whether everything is appropriate to the subject." This idea of reading the picture is fundamental to Poussin's idea of painting. A composition is to be studied figure by figure, and each one will express its role in the story exactly, as does an actor on the stage, without the use of words but with an equally effective means of expression, the alphabet of gesture."
"Secondly, when Poussin says that he has "found . . . certain natural attitudes," the phrase reminds us that, when he selected his poses and gestures to express the feelings of the participants in the story, he was following nature in the Stoic or Aristotelian sense of the word. He would no doubt have endorsed Quintilian's view of the need for the orator to go beyond mere direct speech: "If it were sufficient for an orator to express his thought plainly, he would have nothing to study beyond the mere suitableness of words; but since he has to please, to move, and to rouse the minds of his audience to various states of feeling, he must have recourse for those purposes to the means that are afforded us by the same nature that supplied us with ordinary speech: just as we are led by nature to invigorate our muscles with exercise." To choose appropriate poses and even to embellish them is, therefore, not contrary to nature but true to her real intentions. It must be emphasized, however, that Poussin was a constant and careful student of nature in the literal sense, and that his poses and gestures, though generalized, were based on this study. To quote Félibien again: "He was always studying, wherever he might be. When he walked in the streets he observed the actions of all those he met, and if he saw one which seemed to him of interest, he noted it in a book which he always carried with him for this purpose." This was the raw material which then had to be organized, made explicit, and given rational expression in the process of creating a painting. Unfortunately, none of these sketchbooks survives. It seems likely that Poussin deliberately destroyed them or caused them to be destroyed. They were for him only a means toward the creation of his paintings, and, unlike the Romantics and certain moderns, he did not believe that every stroke that came from his pen was worthy of preservation. The same is true of the drawings from the model, which we know he made first in the studio of Domenichino and later in the course of executing his paintings. Not one survives, and here again we can be fairly certain that Poussin did not think them worthy of preservation."
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| Nicolas Poussin The Israelites Gathering the Manna (detail) 1638-39 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
– Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (Phaidon Press, 1958) and The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: Critical Catalogue (Phaidon Press, 1966)