The classicism in French painting reached its peak with Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). Poussin was a Norman, and spent his youth almost destitute, traveling to Italy without means. At his return to France by invitation of Giambattista Marino, the court poet to Maria de’Medici (Queen of France), he traveled again to Rome in 1624 and there he married a young woman of position, daughter of a chef, which allowed him to live with some comfort. What had a decisive influence on Poussin’s art was the revelation of the Roman landscape of the Latium: its green countryside with flocks, dotted with classical ruins, framed by the high peaks of the Apennines and the Alban Mountains. Poussin didn’t leave Rome for 40 years, except for a short stay in Paris. His successes and the reputation he achieved in Rome reached the ears of King Louis XIII and cardinal Richelieu, who tried to attract him, until they managed to retain him in Paris for a period of two years, with the position of royal painter, enjoying a good salary and housing in the Tuileries Palace. Finally, Poussin, who had left his family in Rome, escaped one day before the winter of 1642, never to leave the Eternal City again for the rest of his life. However, Poussin has always been considered as a great French master, and before Jean-Baptiste Colbert created the French Academy in Rome, he, as a quasi-official agent of the French Crown, received and directed the retired French painters who came to Rome to copy famous works, copies that later would decorate the rooms of the Louvre palace.
“My nature,” wrote Poussin, “makes me seek and appreciate well-ordered things and flee from confusion that is contrary and enemy to myself, as darkness is to light.” But he wasn’t content with wanting order out of an intellectual desire to imitate antiquity, as some critics have supposed, but because —as he himself said— “there are two ways of seeing things: one by simply seeing them, and the other by considering them carefully.” Poussin loved matter and wished to ennoble it (and deep down Tiziano had done the same thing). That is why, in his paintings, it seems he ‘washes and polishes’ the rocks, he ‘combs’ the trees and ‘polishes’ the heavens. His themes, generally mythological, are also Titianesque, and in some of them, such as the Shepherds of Arcadia (1637-1638), we see hints of a vague melancholic note (or a disappointment under a beautiful twilight sky) that we will observe later in the Rococo works by Jean-Antoine Watteau. The painting is also known as “Et in Arcadia ego“, a phrase coined by Virgil and used in 17th century Italy expressing a humanistic sentiment: “even in Arcadia I (i.e. Death) am to be found”. That can be interpreted as no place, even the escapist, pastoral world of Arcady, is no refuge from death.
In the interpretation of Poussin, who made two versions of the same theme, we see four idealized shepherds (including a shepherdess) from Classical antiquity before a tomb and trying to decipher the inscription carved on it with an air of melancholic curiosity. In the scene there’s no sense of surprise, and instead, the shepherds are arranged in attitudes of contemplation around the tomb in the countryside. It seems Poussin here lost all interest in story-telling, and concentrated on a totally static scene. The painting doesn’t show attention on surface texture, and the whole is hard and cold, with the figures in statuesque poses.
But the evolution of Poussin’s work didn’t follow a single direction, as soon as we see in his art, tendencies towards cold abstract compositions, a product of his analytical spirit, such as in The Hunt of Meleager and Atalanta (1634-1639). The painting represents an anecdote from Greek mythology and described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Meleager, son of the king of the Aetolians of Calydon, Oeneus, and his wife, Althea, march, accompanied by a large group of people from Aetolia including Atalanta, the princess, to hunt down a huge wild boar sent by Artemis to devastate the lands. This painting denotes Poussin’s fidelity to classicism: the horses seem inspired by the friezes of the Parthenon.
At the same time, Poussin’s sense of sensuality tended towards a more realistic tone, as in his various paintings with the Bacchanal theme or like in the Triumph of Flora (1627-628), an episode also taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and a painting with clear Venetian inspiration. Throughout his career Poussin liked to dwell on themes of transformation, especially those found in stories from classical antiquity. Flora was the ancient goddess of plants and flowers. We see the triumphal procession being led by Venus, with Flora riding on a chariot drawn by putti.
Poussin’s greatness has been deformed by academicism, and perhaps it only began to be deeply understood from Cézanne’s phrase: “II faut refaire Poussin sur nature” (“Poussin must be reimagined from nature”).
Poussin’s contemporary in Rome was another French artist, a native of Lorraine, Claude Gellée, or Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), known in Spain as ‘Claudio Lorena’. He was the artist who led French painting of the 17th century towards the style of the Dutch landscape. Unlike Poussin, who painted landscapes so that they could serve as splendid backgrounds for his figures, Claude used to say that in his paintings he ‘sold’ his landscapes and instead ‘gave away’ the characters that inhabited them. In his paintings —sometimes a bit scenographic— the figures are tiny; the predominant element is the panorama, an idealized panorama, but one that’s interesting and produces emotion, with its plays of light and its deep perspectives. Claude Lorrain’s seascapes, with light effects at dusk, spread with extraordinary success throughout Europe. They generally represent ports with monumental buildings where the characters come and go in their way to board ships ready to set sail. His fantastic lighting effects influenced the Dutch artists Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael, and —later— the English artist William Turner who was, artistically, a son of Claude Lorrain.
Furthermore, for his own knowledge and study, Lorrain compiled some 200 drawings in an album that he titled Liber Veritatis (1635-1682, British Museum), where he focused in the representation of diverse aspects of the Roman landscape, drawn from nature, a book of drawings (studies and sketches) recording his completed paintings.
Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) was born in Brussels. He trained in Flanders and was influenced by his compatriots Rubens and Van Dyck. When he was not yet 20 years old he joined a group of Flemish who went to Paris, hired by Maria de’Medici, to paint the Luxembourg Palace. In Paris his talent was soon recognized when he was appointed painter to the queen in 1628, and then —successively— to Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu, Anne of Austria and even Louis XIV. It is natural, then, that Philippe de Champaigne —despite living away from the court, in a house in the Saint-Jacques suburb, then a neighborhood of schools and convents— was requested to decorate important places: the churches of Saint-Gervais, Saint Sévérin, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, etc. All these works, with the exception of the dome of the Sorbonne, have unfortunately disappeared, but some of his portraits are still preserved, among which stands out that of Cardinal Richelieu (ca. 1639). In it, we see the cardinal as a great gentleman, elegant, with an intelligence that in his eyes (“mirror of the soul”) reveals itself fine and sharp.
The sitter for this grandiose portrait by de Champaigne was Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1585-1642), cardinal, Chief Minister to the King and virtual ruler of France from 1624 until his death. Richelieu consolidated the central powers of the crown and put down the Huguenot rebellion. He also created the French merchant navy, while on land, he challenged the might of the Habsburg Empire. Unable to have himself portrayed as ruler, as he was not king, Richelieu was portrayed in the pose traditionally associated with French monarchs. This was rare as he was a Cardinal, as they were usually portrayed sitting. He is depicted wearing crimson and standing against a great Baroque swathe of curtain. Richelieu wears the chivalric Order of the Saint-Esprit, its blue ribbon contrasting with the white linen and the crimson satin of his collar and cloak. Instead of a baton or cane, he holds his scarlet cardinal’s hat in his stiffly extended right hand. De Champaigne depicted this object as if it was floating up to the surface of the canvas in defiance of spatial logic, hypnotically drawing our view to its presence in the painting. Richelieu’s face is the distant apex of an elongated pyramid, which down is lustrously draped with his crimson robes flowing like lava. The King’s Minister stares haughtily out, allowing us to look at him.
But de Champaigne was above all famous for the pictures he painted for the convent of Port-Royal, the center around which the Jansenists grouped. Jansenism was a theological movement within Catholicism, that arose in an attempt to reconcile the theological concepts of free will and divine grace. Jansenists were subject to persecution by ecclesiastical and civil authorities, particularly by the Jesuits, an order they were in conflict with.
In the 1640s de Champaigne became deeply influenced by Jansenism. He then painted portraits of Jansenist leaders in a cool, restrained, rational French spirit, like the portrait of Jean du Vergier de Hauranne (ca. 1646), a figure of primary importance in that spiritual movement.
A daughter of de Champaigne professed as a nun in Port-Royal under the name of Catherine de Sainte-Suzanne, and was miraculously cured of a paralysis that kept her immobilized on her right side for 14 months. The mother superior of Port-Royal, Mother Agnès Arnauld, decided to make a ‘novena’, after which the sick nun woke up cured and was able to go on her own to hear mass. Philippe de Champaigne then painted a large Ex-voto* dedicated to “Christ, only doctor of souls and bodies”, in which his sick daughter and the mother superior appear. The classic naturalism of this masterpiece was achieved by dint of simplification.
One of de Champaigne’s most accomplished works, this Ex Voto de 1662 (1662) depicts a miracle involving his daughter that is said to have occurred at the Port-Royal-des-Champs convent. The painting represents Mother-Superior Cathérine-Agnès Arnauld and Sister Cathérine de Sainte-Suzanne, the daughter of the artist. A ray of light illuminates Mother-Superior Agnès Arnauld during the ninth day of her novena for Champaigne’s daughter, Sister Catherine de Sainte Suzanne, in the hope that she would be cure of her illness. Catherine (seated and praying) was the painter’s only surviving child, and had been suffering from a paralyzing illness. Until that point, prayer and medical treatments had proven futile. After the Mother-Superior’s novena, Sister Catherine soon attempted to walk, and found herself increasingly mobile; the illness seemed not to be present. The painting is a statement of gratitude by the father for the cure of his daughter. The composition is unique among de Champaigne’s work, with the two figures having richly defined, “sculptural” forms, giving them vitality and setting them off from the restricted color palette and simplicity of the setting. As the two figures dominate the canvas, they give the painting its monumental quality. The texture, weight, and folds of their robes are modeled in great detail, revealing de Champaigne’s Flemish training. The painting includes a Latin inscription on the wall on the left. Neither the text nor the lettering were de Champaigne’s work. The inscription, addressed to Christ, recounts that Sister Catherine suffered for 14 months from a high fever and that half her body was paralyzed; that she also prayed with Mother Agnès and her health was restored, and again she offered herself to Christ; and that in turn de Champaigne offers the painting as a testament to this miracle and to express his joy for the recovery of his beloved daughter.
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*Ex Voto: (from Latin “ex voto suscepto“, meaning “from the vow made”). A votive offering, consisting of one or more objects displayed or deposited without the intention of recovery or use given to a saint or a divinity in fulfillment of a vow or in gratitude or devotion, and placed in a sacred place for religious purposes.
The Artistic Adventure of Mankind 