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| Nicolas Poussin Holy Family with Ten Figures 1649 oil on canvas National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin |
HISTORY: Painted for [Jean] Pointel in 1649; in [Jacques] Cérisier's collection by 1665. The Dublin painting belonged to the Earls of Milltown by 1847 (when it was lent to the Royal Irish Art Union) and was given to the National Gallery in 1902 by Geraldine, Countess of Milltown, widow of the sixth earl.
"In most of these compositions [the Holy Families of the late 1640s and early 1950s] the figures build up toward two heads, usually those of the Virgin and Joseph, but these heads are always separated from each other by some emphatic feature: a tree trunk, a pilaster, a vase of flowers, or a distant view of hills [as above]. It is as if Poussin sought the regularity of a triangular design but avoided the monotony of it by never letting sides reach an apex."
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| Nicolas Poussin Landscape with St Francis ca. 1648-50 oil on canvas National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade |
HISTORY: Belonged in the seventeenth century to the Marquis de Hauterive. Probably Crozat sale, Delatour, Paris, 1751. Bought by J. Böhler, Munich in 1931 from Anthony Reyre, London; sold to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia; passed to the Yugoslav State.
"Nothing is known of the circumstances in which Poussin was commissioned to paint the Landscape with St. Francis. The painting has hitherto been known simply as the Landscape with Three Monks, the title give it by [André] Félibien, but the subject can be identified with rather greater precision. Poussin has painted the gray habits of the friars with sufficient accuracy for them to be clearly identified as Franciscans. The seated friar is discoursing to the other two, who are younger, and one of whom wears the scapula, which identifies him as a tertiary. The older man is bearded and conforms to the normal type used for St. Francis. . . . Whether or not this identification is accepted, the principal theme of the painting is indubitably Solitude, as Félibien also calls it, given visible form by three Franciscan monks who have taken refuge from the world in a remote valley. This theme would have been dear to Poussin's heart."
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| Nicolas Poussin Assumption of the Virgin 1649-50 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Painted for Henri d'Étampes-Valençay, French ambassador to Rome, and finished on 21.i.1650; probably belonged to Louis Cauchon Hesselin, Sieur de Condé, who died in 1664; certainly to Séraphin de Mauroy, who died in 1668 and whose name appears on the engraving by Pesne; and to Jean Néret de la Ravoye, from whom it was bought by Louis XIV in 1685.
"The little Assumption [above] and the larger Ecstasy of St. Paul [below], painted in the same year, show that Poussin was capable of producing simultaneously a Baroque and a classical variation on the same theme. The St. Paul is richer in figures and freer in movement than the version painted for Chantelou seven years earlier, whereas the Assumption is more severe, more restrained, and more strictly formal."
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| Nicolas Poussin The Ecstasy of St Paul 1649-50 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Painted for Paul Scarron in 1649-50; sold by him to [Everhard] Jabach and by him to the Duc de Richelieu; bought with the collection of the Duc de Richelieu by Louis XIV in 1665.
"How rigidly geometrical is Poussin's treatment of landscape can be seen in a rather curious example, the view that fills the bottom of his Ecstasy of St. Paul, painted for Scarron. The view is seen through an architectural setting, composed of a pilaster on the left and a wall with a niche on the right. Between the two is a step on which lie a book and a sword, the traditional symbols of the saint. But Poussin has related this foreground to the distant view in the most exact manner. The horizontal of the step is echoed in the line of the river, and the line of the sword is repeated no less than three times, twice in the foreground and once again in the outline of the farthest hills. It is as if Poussin was drawing out for us in the foreground the geometrical basis on which his background was constructed."
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| Nicolas Poussin Holy Family with young St John the Baptist and St Elizabeth 1651 oil on canvas Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena and Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
HISTORY: Commissioned in 1651 by Charles, 3rd Duc de Créquy (died 1687); Raoul de la Porte by 1713; William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, at Devonshire House, London, by 1761; by inheritance to Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, Derbyshire; Devonshire sale, Christie, London, 1981; purchased jointly by the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. – (provenance from the Norton Simon Museum)
"This is one of Poussin's most lyrical depictions of the Holy Family, a subject that occupied him during the 1650s. The Virgin and Saint Joseph look on as Saint John the Baptist and Christ playfully embrace. On the right is a procession of Christ's first martyrs, the Holy Innocents. Their gestures point to the Christ Child, whose sacrifice on the cross will redeem their martyred souls. Two Innocents carry a basin of water, one carries a towel, which may refer to the Shroud of the Passion, and another kneels to adore the Holy Child [in fact, one bows to adore the Holy Child, the kneeling one is offering grapes, and yet another supports a ewer, with water for the basin]. In the distance, a family in a boat, and two men on horseback, may recall the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. The combination of figures and motifs in the composition suggest a message of purification and salvation." – (curator's notes from the Norton Simon Museum)
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| Nicolas Poussin Virgin and Child ca. 1650 engraving by Jean Pesne (before 1690) of lost painting Philadelphia Museum of Art |
HISTORY: In 1665 Gianlorenzo Bernini saw a painted half-length Virgin and Child by Poussin in the house of Jacques Cérisier in Paris. Of all the compositions known in the original or through engravings, that engraved by Jean Pesne is the only one to fit this description.
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| Nicolas Poussin Christ Healing the Blind Men 1650 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Painted for Reynon in 1650; in the collection of the Duc de Richelieu, and sold with it to Louis XIV in 1665.
"With architecture as with sculpture, Poussin sometimes turns to early Christian art for his model, though examples are rare. In Christ Healing the Blind Men, in spite of the anachronism, he introduces in the background an early basilica with a colonnaded portico and a tower. At first sight this would appear to be easily identifiable with an existing church, but this proves not to be the case, and there is some reason for thinking that Poussin in fact made his own variation on this theme."
"In many of these compositions [of the late 1640's and early 1650's] the figure group is set against a background from which it appears to be almost completely separated, as in the paintings of the 1630's, but the relation is actually closer than in earlier works. The focal point of interest in the Blind Men, for instance, is emphasized by the campanile beside the church just above the main group, which in its turn is carried on by the tower of the castle on the hill, while a subordinate point of interest, the second blind man, is under the small tower over the Palladian villa in the middle distance."
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| Nicolas Poussin Holy Family under a Group of Trees ca. 1650-52 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Loménie de Brienne states that a Holy Family, engraved by Michael Natalis for the doctoral thesis of the Cardinal de Bouillon, was originally painted for "Mme. la Surintendante Fouquet," i.e. Marie de Castille, second wife of Nicholas Fouquet, whom she married in 1651. The only engraving of a Holy Family by Natalis corresponds to the Louvre painting. It was bought by Louis XIV from the painter Charles-Antoine Hérault in 1685.
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| Nicolas Poussin Holy Family with young St John the Baptist and St Elizabeth 1651 oil on canvas Harvard Art Museums |
HISTORY: Jean Froment de Veine, by 1678; Mme. d'Hariague sale, Mariette, Paris, 1750; M. Peilhon sale, Remy, Paris 1763; Duc de Deux Ponts sale, Remy Paris, 1778; M. Robit sale, Paillet, Paris 1801 bought by Michael Bryan, London; sold by Bryan to George Hibbert, Lord Radstock,1809; Radstock sale, Christie, London, 1826; Sir Simon Clarke sale, Christie, London, 1840; Thomas Hope sale, Christie, London, 1917, bought by Arthur Tooth & Sons, London; Trotti & Cie, Paris, by 1923; Richard Owen, Paris, sold in 1923 to Samuel Sachs; gift of Mrs. Samuel Sachs to the Fogg Art Museum in 1942. – (provenance from Harvard Art Museums)
"One of a group of five paintings of the Holy Family that Poussin produced between 1648 and 1655, this version is distinguished by the extensive landscape and the large bath basin that refers to Christ's later baptism. Poussin emphasized Christ's humanity by showing him writhing in fear at his mother's attempt to bathe him. He receives firm support from the infant Saint John, who is accompanied by his mother, Saint Elizabeth. The classical putti assisting the Virgin could represent the Holy Innocents martyred during King Herod's attempt to kill the infant Jesus. The landscape in this canvas is the most highly developed representation of nature in this group of paintings. The large lake, the passerby, the carefully placed structures along the water's edge create a contemplative expanse of natural beauty." – (curator's notes from Harvard Art Museums)
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| Nicolas Poussin The Adoration of the Shepherds ca. 1653 oil on canvas Yale University Art Gallery |
HISTORY: Probably the painting commissioned from Poussin in 1650 by Seraphin de Mauroy, Intendant des Finances and later French Ambassador to Rome; apparently executed in 1653; Joachim de Seigliere de Boisfranc; collection of William Morris Hunt, Boston; Count Ivan N. Podgoursky, New York and San Antonio; by descent to his son, William Lapko; gift and partial purchase from William Lapko by Yale University Art Gallery in 2016. – (provenance from Yale University Art Gallery)
"Poussin's late figure compositions are the typical product of an artist in his old age. During the years in which they were painted he had become even more completely detached from the world than in the middle period of his life; he lived only for his art and for the company of a very restricted circle of friends who really understood it. He had deliberately rejected success in the battlefield of Roman art and had preferred to pursue his own ideals undisturbed. As a result, his painting became more personal and more uncompromising. All the attractions and ornaments of the earlier periods are now gone: the Venetian color of the thirties, the dramatic rhetoric and the narrative vivacity of the forties. Instead, he works out carefully planned, motionless compositions made up of rocklike figures who gaze into infinity, unaware of what is going on around them. His paintings have the timeless quality of all great classical art, and they also embody an absolute refusal to make any concession to the senses. Sometimes, by the intensity and directness of their expression, his figures hover on the brink of the comic, as in the shepherd in the Adoration [above] who lies flat on his face adoring the Child in an almost grotesque attitude. . . . Poussin did not care about such clumsiness, provided he attained the particular grandeur that he sought and the particular balance of simple lines and masses which gives their special character to his last works."
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| Nicolas Poussin Holy Family with St John the Baptist and St Elizabeth ca. 1653-55 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
HISTORY: Painted for [Paul Fréart de] Chantelou (finished 1655). Possibly Comte de Fraula collection, Brussels, by 1720; sold de Vos, Brussels, 1738. Bought in Paris through Lord Waldegrave by Sir Robert Walpole; seen in his collection by Vertue in 1739; bought with the whole of the Walpole collection in 1779 by the Empress Catherine II of Russia.
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| Nicolas Poussin Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery 1653 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Painted for André Le Nôtre in 1653, and given by him to Louis XIV in 1693.
"The religious compositions of the last ten years of Poussin's life show the calm monumentality which characterized the paintings of the years around 1650, particularly the Holy Families, but this quality is now carried still further. . . . These features can best be seen by a comparison between the Woman Taken in Adultery of 1653 [above] and the Death of Sapphira [below]. Basically the subjects invite similar treatment; both are dramatic incidents which strike those who witness them with astonishment; but the treatment is markedly different in the two cases. In the earlier painting the variety of action is great; two figures bend down to point out what Christ has written in the sand; two men at the extreme edges of the composition hurry away, as if driven by their own consciences; the Pharisee stands by undecided and embarrassed; and the central figures of Christ and woman form in their motionless poses a contrast to the confusion around them. In the Death of Sapphira the figures are stationary. Sapphira has fallen dead, and three figures bend over her; the three Apostles stand on the right like avenging deities, pointing, but making no movement; on the left a mother stands looking on with her child; and in the middle, one figure moves hastily away."
"The static effect of the composition is increased by the treatment of the figures. In the Woman Taken in Adultery they are gesticulating puppets; in the Death of Sapphira they are massive marble statues which one can hardly imagine breaking into action of any kind. The earlier composition is made up of isolated figures, each of whom makes the short jabbing gestures typical of Poussin's style in the 1640's. The Sapphira is composed of two masses separated by a caesura in the center, as if Poussin intended a clear opposition between justice on the one side and the evil which it is punishing on the other."
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| Nicolas Poussin The Death of Sapphira ca. 1654-56 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Nicolas Poussin The Death of Sapphira (detail) ca. 1654-56 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
HISTORY: Belonged to Jean Fromont de Veine in 1685; bought by Louis XIV from C.A. Hérault in 1685.
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| Nicolas Poussin St Peter and St John Healing the Lame Man 1655 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
HISTORY: Painted in 1655 for Mercier, Treasurer of the city of Lyons; passed from him to M. de Bordeaux, Intendant des Finances, whose secretary obtained it from him; Loménie de Brienne tried to buy it from the secretary, but his offer was refused. In 1679 it belonged to Antoine Bouzonnet Stella; bequeathed to his niece, Claudine Bouzonnet Stella, and on her death in 1697 to her niece, Anne Molandier. Later, in the collection of Prince Eugene of Savoy; at his death in 1736 bought by Prince Liechtenstein; offered by him to Augustus of Saxony in 1743 through Algarotti and Brühl, but not in fact purchased; remained with the house of Liechtenstein until sold to the Metropolitan Museum in 1924.
"The same statuesque quality is visible in the St. Peter and St. John Healing the Lame Man. True, there are figures moving up and down the steps, but in so grave a manner that they do not break the silence of the scene. In this picture Poussin also uses a device which he was to employ frequently in his last years: both the heads and hands of the figures become abnormally large. By this means the hands can be made more expressive with less actual movement, and the heads take on the character of ancient theatrical masks, or, as in the old man on the right, the appearance of a Roman bust of Jupiter."
– Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (Phaidon Press, 1958) and The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: Critical Catalogue (Phaidon Press, 1966)