Eileen Harris in Apollo Magazine advances a detailed historical interpretation of the Et in Arcadia Ego monument at Shugborough - with - good news! - a nice denial of the fanciful relationship between Nicolas Poussin's painting of The shepherds in Arcadia in the Louvre, and The Holy Grail. http://www.apollo-magazine.com/may-2006/73766/cracking-the-poussin-code.thtml
March 31, 2010 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, Religion, research | Permalink | Comments (18)
This is the text of an essay written in early 2006 for a volume edited by David Packwood & Phillippa Plock that, after several attempts to get past the publishing blockade I wrote about earlier today, has finally had to be abandoned.
The argument is in 6,000 words similar to the argument of my much longer book Poussin's Humour written in 2008. I have very lightly emended it today.
The opening section appears below.
The
Measure of Poussin’s Painting.
Tony
Green
On a toujours
essayé d’élucider le problème de Poussin à partir d’un examen de ses idées, de
ses sources et de ses thèmes, parfois aussi à partir du matériel d’objets dont
il s’est inspiré – objets matériels ou objets figuratifs. Or, le problème de
Poussin n’est pas un problème des sources, mais un problème de création.
Pierre Francastel,
1958. Colloque
Poussin,
1960, I, 202
I. The Legacy of
Twentieth-Century Poussin Scholarship
Forty
years on, there has still been no serious attempt to confront Francastel’s “problème
de création”, to solve which he had placed himself “résolument au
point de vue plastique.” Instead, the corpus of Nicolas
Poussin’s history paintings has attracted a largely hermeneutic, exegetical and
philological corpus of writing. Poussin as a painter, brush in hand, barely
figures in this commentary. Instead his paintings have been regarded as if they
were secondary texts to the primary texts of history, philosophy and literature
that he had read. In order to determine his ideas, it has been supposed that
what was required was to locate those texts and see through the density of
their medium to the statements, propositions and arguments that constitute
ideas. To be sure, it was qualified that these ideas were always somewhat
modified by Poussin.
Exemplary
of this corpus of writing (in English) is Anthony Blunt’s 1967 monograph on
Poussin as “peintre-philosophe.”[i]
Blunt explicitly rejected “modern” understanding of Poussin as “one of the
great masters of formal design.” He set himself to explain, on the “exact
contrary”, Poussin’s “thought”, how Poussin “gives visible expression to
certain ideas.”[ii] These, he
made clear, are ethical and metaphysical ideas, sufficient representations of
Poussin’s philosophical world-view. By rejecting Roger Fry’s “extreme” formalist
disregard of content, Blunt takes license for an equally extreme
disqualification of form. He treats “style” as no more than an adjunct,
regarding Poussin’s classicism as a reflection of stoicism. The medium, the
means, is squeezed out of consideration, as no more than instrumental.
Consequently, everything that Blunt calls ideas is derived from whatever he can
isolate in the pictures as narrative and symbol.
The
hermeneutic process of interpretation when applied to paintings makes them into
pseudo-writing. Though writing is difficult enough as a medium for ideas,
painting offers difference. Propositions and arguments are beyond its powers;
whilst its expression of narrative is also strictly limited by its medium. The
current common opinion is that Poussin’s paintings are merely a specialized
topic of philological erudition. Unless and until Francastel’s project is
renewed, modified by subsequent theory, it will not be possible to take the
measure of Poussin as a painter.[iii]
We
might begin with Poussin’s own fundamental definition of painting: “an
imitation made with lines and colors on a surface of all that can be seen under
the Sun: its purpose is delight.”[iv]
Torquato Tasso may be the source for Poussin’s definition of painting: this is
a modification of Artistotle’s discussion of drama in the Poetics.[v]
Alain
Rey has argued that Aristotle’s term mimesis was restricted in
meaning in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, because of the then
insistent use for the imitation of an object and its fixation on beauty.[vi]
But, as Rey shows, Artistotelian mimesis extended to the arts of
dance and flute-playing, which often do not have an object to imitate. Mimesis included
both what was represented, the mimemata, and how it was
represented, the means or medium, the semeia: rhythmos, logos, and armonia. In
painting, Rey notes, these semeia can only be the colors
and figures. Omission of the semeia has continually
privileged content. This has its roots in the doctrine of the Académie Royale
in the 1660s, based on literary and rhetorical theory. The semeia were
regarded as elementary craft, an address to the senses, which every guild-
member could produce, whereas the Academy’s art addressed the mind, with a
rational deployment of rhetorical content.
The
modernist alternative of a return to a privileging of form has had little
credit in art history, seen as aesthetic - subjective and sensual
style-preferences. But Rey’s re-reading of Aristotle, points to a sense of form
that has been mistakenly rejected along with formalism. When form is understood
as a verb instead of as a noun, artworks can be seen as having been formed in
their media, semeia, towards their overall effect of figuration, mimemata. The resultant
overall pictorial effect, the look of the picture, sets the terms for the
process of seeing in all its inferential complexity.
Form,
in this sense, is the necessary fundamental focus of attention of any painter,
the trans-formation of colors into figures. The continual assessment of this in
a work in progress cannot be based entirely on a lucid theoretical statement
formulated in advance. Poussin included a remark to this effect in his
observations on painting, on the practice of painting: “OF THE EXAMPLE OF GOOD
MASTERS. Even though instruction concerning practice follows the study of
theory, unless theoretical precepts are confirmed by evidence they do not
impress on the mind the working habits that are the result of practical
experience” or scienza fattiva [vii] This scienza
fattiva,
as painters know, is accumulated by looking at paintings and refining workshop
practice. In this regard, painters may be said to think with their painting, as
directors of movies think with moving images; as poets think with their poems;
or as choreographers, “create their images not in words, but in plastic positions
and rhythmic movements.”[viii]
The privileging of content misses the crucial engagement of the arts with their
media. It hastens to analyze paraphrases of plot, character and symbol; treats
media as transparent to what they represent; and ignores the thought that takes
place in medium and process.
Few
accounts of Poussin’s paintings recognize how the effects of figures are
produced. But they rarely begin at the level of the scienza fattiva that has
produced the visible. The production by painting of the visible is, in ancient
theory, considered as the result of an effort, wonderful in itself, developed
from generation to generation. The painting of the invisible, dependent on the
painting of the visible, is perhaps the most important measure of history
painting in those writings of antiquity respected by Poussin and his
contemporaries, in Xenophon, in Pliny the Elder, and in Philostratus.[ix]
It is also critically important in our time. W. T. Mitchell writes: “We
can never understand a picture unless we grasp the ways in which it shows what
cannot be seen. One thing that cannot be seen in an illusionistic picture, or
which tends to conceal itself is precisely its own artificiality.”[x]
[i] Anthony F. Blunt, Nicolas Poussin: The A.W. Mellon Lectures in
the Fine Arts, 1958 (London: Phaidon Press, and New
York: Bollingen Foundation, 1967).
[ii] See for example, Hubert Damisch., “Huit
Thèses pour (ou contre?) une Sémiologie de la Peinture,” Macula, 2 (1977): 17-23.
[iii] Aristotle, “On the Art of Poetry,” in Classical Literary
Criticism, ed. and trans. T. S. Dorsch (London:
Penguin Books, 1965), 32-33.
[iv] Alain Rey, “Mimesis, Poétique et
Iconisme: pour une Relecture d’Aristote,” in Iconicity: Essays on the Nature
of Culture, eds. Paul Bouissac, Michael Heizfeld and Roland Posner (Tübingen:
Stauffenberg Verlag, 1986), 19.
[v] Floyd Merrell, Pierce, Signs and Meaning (Toronto, Buffalo, London: Toronto University Press, 1997),
especially Chapter 15, 315-342
[vi] Alain Rey, “Mimesis, Poétique et
Iconisme”
[vii] Printed in Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, 361: “Dell’esempio de’ buoni maestri.
Quantunque dopò la dottrina, si agghiungino gl’inseganamenti, che riguardono la
pratica, con tutto ciò fino e tanto che li precetti non si veggono autenticati,
non lasciano nell’animo quel’habito dell’operare che deue essere l’effetto dell
scienza fattiua”
[viii] Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-Mouvement (Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1983), 7; The Autobiography of
William Carlos Williams (London, MacGibbon &
Kee, 1968), 390; Bronislava Nijinska, Early Memoirs, ed. and trans. Irina Nijinska and
Jean Rawlinson (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1982), 466
[ix] Xenophon, Memorabilia, III, X, 1; Pliny
the Elder, Natural History, XXXV, 79-90; and Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, VoI, 19, ed. and trans. by J. J. Pollitt, in The
Art of Greece (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall),
160-1, 168, 222.
[x] W. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 39. See also T. J. Clark. The Sight of Death: an Experiment in Art
Writing. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
Because of the length of the whole essay I have uploaded it as a .pdf file Download 12. Green-1 A
March 24, 2010 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, research | Permalink | Comments (5)
The file is no longer available. It will be included, revised, in the book Poussin's Humour.
February 28, 2008 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, research | Permalink | Comments (5)
see today's post on 'accumulations' www.Tony_Green.typepad.com -
in midst of reading Murray Krieger on ekphrasis -
& recently W.J.T.Mitchell - while revising what I'm
in the middle of writing on Philostratus, Bellori & Poussin -
not lit theory, not primarily psychological,
as those 2 writers are -
more to do with illusion & artifice in painting -
regard sketch-books/note-books/paintings/spiral poems
as workings towards the Poussin-project -
also reading Rachel Blau DuPlessis' 'Drafts'
that incorporate theoretical musings & widespread
textual matter into canto-like sometimes O'Hara-like
odes -
notice also James Elkins' attention - rereading recently -
to lubricating or at least moistening our dry texts
how much of this can ever be footnoted as the texts behind the text?
two blogs - means only probably two different readerships - need to merge sometimes
February 18, 2008 in research, semiotics, theory | Permalink | Comments (6)
The file is no longer available. It will be included, revised, in the book Poussin's Humour.
November 10, 2007 in Games, POUSSIN PAINTINGS, research, semiotics | Permalink | Comments (11)
Part V. Poussin and the false worship of the pagans.
[Continuing with this retrospective of Chapter IV of my 1968 thesis, I remember it as striking out in a new direction – away from the narrowly constricting view that I found everywhere of Poussin as Stoic, as Rational, as Classicist, & Poussin as having little serious interest in Christian themes. Keyboarding it I will be interested to see how far this is borne out, how far the nature of the biblical and antiquarian commentary as fundamentally tied to Counter-Reformation interests, still seems to be convincing as Poussin’s context for his religious paintings. Much as I admired the then new work of Charles Dempsey on Poussin in Egypt, I also thought that, as later in relation to the “E’ on the Pillar in Ordination II, the lack of knowledge of this context had misled him in his interpretation of the Hermitage Rest on the Flight into Egypt.]
The use of antiquarian motifs, like the triclinium, resulted in greater ‘decorum’ in Poussin’s pictures than in those of his predecessors. They were seen by Roland de Chambray in 1662 as enhancing the religious significance of the Eucharist and the Penitence of the second set of Sacraments. His conclusions are those of criticism of the arts, while his arguments depend on the exegetical tradition of the writers on the feasts of the Bible. There are other uses of antique imagery in the Sacraments and in Poussin’s Moses pictures. These have been taken as evidence that Poussin ‘rationalised’ his Biblical Gospel stories. He did not subject pagan and Christian beliefs to rational scrutiny in order to demythologize them, as has been suggested.{C.Dempsey. Poussin and Egypt. Art bulletin, XLV, 1963, p117}. On the contrary, he packed his pictorial images more and more densely with symbolism drawn from many sources, some Christian, some apparently pagan, in an attempt to elucidate the spiritual sense of his subjects. To be sure, the structure of his painting becomes increasingly lucid and orderly in the late 1640s and early 1650s. This is not so much a symptom of a deep-seated rationalism, as a concomitant of an increasing tendency to represent and ideal and remote world. Unlike many seventeenth century painters he was not intent upon creating the illusion of a familiar reality in his pictures, either in subject or in symbolism.
That Poussin made use of hieroglyphs is well-known. His own seal contained one. {Confidentia derived from Ripa’s Iconolgia, not from Cartari as stated by Bellori. 1728, p288.See Blunt, The paintings of Nicolas Poussin, Text. 1967. p17 & n67.} There are two in the Sacraments. In Penitence I in the middle ground there is the hieroglyph of a right hand extended with an eye in the palm. In Ordination II there is the ‘E’ on the pillar on the left.
The hieroglyphs were believed in the renaissance to have originated in Egypt. They were intended [or so it was believed] as a secret writing which was invented by the priests to protect the mysteries of their religion from profanation by the ignorant. These hieroglyphs were adapted to create a symbolism which was adopted by numerous writers and artists in the Renaissance. The most famous compendium of hieroglyphs was that of Pierio Valeriano. {Hieroglyphica. Lyon, 1556. Frankfort edition, as Hieroglyphicum collectanea, 1614}. His book was widely used for reference on the subject for two centuries. Although in origin the hieroglyphs were pagan, in Pierio’s usage, and in that of the Renaissance generally they were on the hazy border-line between Christian and profane. [The distinction in religion was clear, but the same pagan symbols reappeared in Christian monuments] Along with the monuments of antiquity, the study of ancient languages, ritual and history, they were first used to enrich the Christian tradition, rather than to undermine it. It was not in this, but in the study of ancient philosophy, both moral and natural, that the rationalist tradition had its roots. Pierio cites pagan and Christian authors in the same breath, and evidently saw no danger in so doing.
Ancient religion itself, as has been said, was connected with the Christian religion by current views of history. Egypt, where the hieroglyphs had their origin was of the utmost significance. It was well-known that the Egyptian religious mysteries, especially those of Isis, had influenced the religion of the Hellenistic world, and were thus the source of many of the mysteries of Roman religion. The connection was very apparent to antiquarians in the seventeenth century, who were surrounded by the remains of late antiquity, with its numerous references to the mysteries. Hence, the study of Roman ritual and religious belief was one way of penetrating the earliest mysteries of the ancient world. The study of these objects [?], with their mixed rites ands inherent syncretism, provided the basis for seventeenth century syncretist views of the pagan deities, these were particularly common in the circle of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. {See C.Dempsey.The classical perception of nature in Poussin’s earlier works. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1966, pp 219-249, especially pp233-241, where he makes a brilliant analysis of the fundamental attitudes to antiquity of the Barberini circle. I am greatly indebted to this article, which complements many of my own findings.} This view of pagan religion was enclosed within the formulation of world history to which I have already referred. Dempsey quoted a highly significant passage from Aleandro, in which it is clear that history was considered as the history of redemption. He shared this view with many contemporaries and predecessors, like Pierio Valeriano in the sixteenth century, and Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit writer on hieroglyphs, Casale, severani and,no doubt, many others.
Within this system many symbols and hieroglyphs familiar in the Christian religion had been known to the ancients. Thus the Chi Rho, the Scarab and the Cross, were all known to have existed in the pagan world. It was realised that many pagan practices had ben adopted by the early Christians and given a new significance. The catacombs and the sarcophagi contained numerous examples, like that of Orpheus in the catacomb pictures. Instead of arguing that this was merely a question of cultural continuity, Severani and his contemporaries pointed to further, more subtle reasons for the reappearance of pagan symbols in a Christian context.
Severani’s comments on the Chi Rho are of considerable interest. After remarking that it signifies Christ, he goes on to point out that although it is generally said to have originated with Constantine, whom was the first to place it on the shields of his soldiers and thereafter defeated Maxentius, it had in fact been used earlier. It had been found on sepulchral monuments that went back at least to the time of Diocletian. Not only was it used by Christians but by pagans, “e fù ancora questa trà li Ieroglifici de gli Egitti”. It had been noticed on Ptolemaic coins and various interpretations had been given to the pagan symbolism. In particular the presence of the Cross part of the hieroglyph was important, “e se bene quelli si servivano di simili note per altri significati: Dio però le preordinava à tali fini, misterii: volendo che queste medesime adombrassero la Croce, & il Crocifisso; così posiamo dire di tutte le alter cose trasportate dall Gentilità al Christianesimo…” {Bosio, op.cit.p630}.Thus the Chi Rho on the shield in Extreme Unction II was originally such a hieroglyph and denotes that the dying man was an early Christian soldier, perhaps a soldier of Constantine.
The scholars of the seventeenth century attributed extraordinary knowledge to the Egyptians. Other symbols were also thought to have had mystery significance for the Egyptians. Thus Kircher followed St Augustine’s interpretation of the Scarab and elaborated it into a complex Christian meaning, cited at length by G.B.Casale in his study of Egyptian rites. {De veteribus Aegyptiorum Ritibus. Rome , 1645. Cited from Hanover, 1681 edition. Cf also Valeriano, op.cit. pp 93-94, who also quotes St Augustine’s interpretation of the Scarab and arrives at similar interpretation by a different route.} It was believed that the scarab had no mortal father, but was born of dung. For Kircher he was a symbol of the only begotten Son of God, who had not disdained to take on lowly human flesh.
For Casale, as for many others, the Egyptians had possessed great arts and had spread these throughout the ancient world.{Casale, op.cit.pp21-23.} They had also been the originators of idolatry and they had spread this too, by conquest. {Ibid.p17}. They had preserved their mysteries in hieroglyphs, but the inventor of these was hotly disputed. Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus were the two chief claimants. {Ibid.p26} It was also claimed that the Jews had learnt a great deal from the wisdom of the Egyptians as well as from their idolatry. Moses had learnt the symbol of the Cross from them. He exhibited this in the form of the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness as a sign of Salvation. {Ibid.p30} The Egyptians were believed to have inscribed the cross, often in the form of a Tau on the surviving obelisks. They had apparently attached a significance to it which was not very remote from the Christian one. Casale cites a passage from Socrates’ History of the Church I which it appears that the Cross was found in the temple of Serapis when it was destroyed by Theodosius. The Cross was supposed to signify ‘Future Life” to the pagans and thereby many were converted to the Christian faith, because of the similarity with the Christian meaning. It was also a symbol of the Egyptian god, Serapis. {The passage is cited by Cardinal Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, Rome, 1590. cited from Paris, 1864-1880 edition, VI, p54. Spondanus, n.16. Casale, opp.cit. p.28. Cornelis à Lapide, op.cit. pp286-289. The last of these authors discusses the problem at great length.}
The identity of Serapis was arrived at by the rules of the ancient game of etymology, in which any kind of word-play, however improbable, was allowed. His identification is of some interest, since the interpretation of Poussin’s Rest on the flight into Egypt [Hermitage] depends on it. This picture is analogous in many ways to Ordination II. Both are patently full of mysteries, both use a curious mixture of Christian and pagan symbols and as it happens both have been interpreted in roughly similar ways.
There were three important traditions which co-existed in the seventeenth century. On the one hand Serapis was supposed to have been Apis, King of the Argives, whose sarcophagus was venerated by the Egyptians. The word for sarcophagus was ‘soros’ and hence the name of the God gradually mutated from ‘Sorosapis’ to ‘Serapis’. Thius was the tradition that was well-known from St Augustine. The second was derived from Plutarch, the essence of which was that Serapis was a bull-god, the resurrected form of Osiris. The third was to be found in a little treatise written by the early /cghristian apologist, Julius Firmicus Maternus, [De errore profanarum religionum]. The treatise was frequently reprinted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the light it shed on early customs among the Christians in Rome. According to this author, the Egyptians had erected a temple to the patriarch Joseph, in gratitude for his having saved them from starvation in the seven years of famine. Joseph was Sarah’s grandson and therefore called ‘Sarae Pronepos’. By even more extraordinary mutations than those by which St Augustine arrived at the name, ‘Sarae Pronepos’ became ‘Serapis’. Joseph, it appears, was thought to have introduced the Doctrine of the Trinity to the Egyptians, since one of the oracles of Serapis was supposed to have mentioned God as three persons: ‘Principio Deus est, tumVerbum, his spiritus unus,/Congenita haec tria sunt, cuncta haec tendentia in unum.
All this was quoted at length by Baronius and Cornelis à Lapide.{Baronius, op.cit. VI, p.54, Cornelis à Lapide,op.cit. pp286-289 and Casale, op.cit. p28}. Casale summarized their opinions in his study of Egyptian rites. Further it was held that Serapis signified ‘Salvator Mundi’. This was highly credible to seventeenth century writers. They knew that Jospeh was a type of Christ, in that he had suffered and eventually triumphed. Cornelis à Lapide devoted several pages to this typological allegory. It was not in the slightest bit surprising that Joseph should be worshipped and regarded as ‘Salvator Mundi’. The identification with the Argive King was also made explicitly by Cornelis à Lapide. Joseph and Apis were exact contemporaries, he claimed.
Since Joseph fed the Egyptians, he must have understood the flooding of the Nile, which was the source of fertility in Egypt. The Egyptian bull-god was the symbol of this fertility. Rufinus quoted by Baronius remarks that the Egyptians measured the Nile at the temple of Serapis, whom they thought was the author of the rising of the waters. To show that it was not the false god Serpais, but the True God who was their author, the greatest flood in living memory occurred after the destruction of the temple of Serapis by Theodosius. The Nilometer was carried off to the church, presumably for use as a font. {Baronius, op.cit. VI, p53}. This would have been highly appropriate, since thy could have dispensed grace from the ancient symbol of grace.
Thus both ‘Soros Apin’ and ‘Sarae Pronepos’ were the same, Argive King and Hebrew Patriarch fused together.
It was not grain that Joseph gave the Egyptians, but allegorically, the Doctrine of the True God. [This summary is typical. Casale, op.cit., p49.’Certe non frumentum tantum, sed veram Dei cognitionem Ioseph tradidiisse Aegyptiis, satis afferitur in Psal.104. dum ait Pharoanem: constituisse eum Dominum domus suae, ut erudiret Principes sicut semetipsum’, ut iure dici posuit eam de sacrosancta Trinitate Sententiam fuisse Iosephi: Traduntque insuper à serapi inventa esse Symbola, quaedam, quibus ab obsessis Deaemone pellerentur, quod Hebraeoruum sapientiae convenit, apud Spondanum.d.n.16.] This Doctrine [as these seventeenth century texts continue] was rapidly forgotten and turned to the purposes of idolatrous worship. Thus, when Moses came to Egypt, he was educated in the arts of the Egyptians, which, according to Plutarch, had been taught by Serapis, or according to others, by Hermes Trismegistus. Moses was, however, educated in the profane arts on the one hand, but in Hebrew doctrine by his mother. Thus, he later denied that he was Pharoah’s son. Cornelis à Lapide asserted that Hermes Trismegistus belonged to a later period of time than Moses, implying that Moses could have learnt nothing of value from the Egyptians. { Cornelis à Lapide, op.cit. p346}. Ficino had edited Hermes Trismegistus in the sixteenth century. He professed a great admiration for this ‘Egyptian’ philosopher, who he believed had written at a period of remote antiquity. He had received some measure of Revelation also, since, according to Ficino, he ahd expounded the doctrine of the Trinity. {Ficino’s edition of Mercurii Trismegistus Poemander – I used the edition of Paris, 1554}. If Hermes Trismegistus lived before Moses, or even about the same time, it could follow that Moses might have learnt not only pagan arts, but Divine Truth in Egypt. If, on the other hand, Hermes Trismegoistus was born after Moses, then taught the Egyptians, Moses could have learnt nothing from them except pagan philosophy. {The question of chronology was therefore of great importance and occupied the time and attention of several scholars.}
When Poussin finished work on the Rest on the Flight into Egypt he wrote to Chantelou of the Egyptian details he had put into it, not for any particular symbolic reasons, but to show that the scene was in Egypt and for the novelty of it. {Letter of 25 November, 1658}. Dempsey, when discussing the picture, the letter and the iconography, remarked that Poussin was obviously telling less than the truth. {Dempsey, op.cit.p113}.In this leter, Pousin refers to “Soros Apin’ who was to be sure, the Egyptian bull-god, the King of the Argives. Dempsey was well aware of this. Whatever form of the name Poussin used, however, he can only acquired his detailed knowledge of the items in his picture from contemporary scholarship. In so doing he would not have failed to encounter the alternative etymologies for the name, and the interpretation as ‘Salvator Mundi’. This would have been most likely, since he was evidently aware of contemporary Biblical commentary. Even turning to Suarez’s ‘Praeneste Antiquae’, Dempsey quoted the passage referring to Serapis. In this the ‘Sarae Pronepos’ etymology follows the ‘Soros Apin’ variant. Demposey made no comment whatever on the appearance of the phrase ‘Sarae Pronepos’, but it is this etymology which provides the connection between Christ in Egypt [in the foreground] and the scene of the Egyptian worship in the middle ground of the picture. The mythology of Serapis was not confined to pagan interpretation, as Dempsey supposed, but had in it the germ of revelation, fulfilled by the presence of Christ. In the background there is a view of a city (a mediaeval city according to Dempsey) with a tower surmounted but a Cross. The Cross is not simply a Christian symbol, but a symbol adopted from pagan worship, signifying Serapis, ‘Salvator Mundi’. This city is not, as Dempsey supposed, the symbol of Christianity afterChrist, but the symbol of Serapis, the type of the true Salvator Mundi.
The Christian scene in the foreground is in completer harmony with the Serapis scene in the [middle ground and] background. It was said by commentators and historians that Christ had descended into Egypt to destroy idolatry at its source. There is no sign here of a broken idol. According to Baronio the destruction of the idols signified the penitence of the inhabitants of Egypt. Not all, he continued, were penitent, for Theodosius had had to destroy the idolatrous temple of Serapis at a later date [389 C.E] . {Baronius, I, p13.} The ceremony in Ooussin’s picture can only indicate the Egyptians worshipping at the temple of ‘Sarae Pronepos’, Joseph, the type of Christ, who had revealed the True God to them and brought fertility to them during the years of famine. In this sense Chriotst hads come to restore their original worship ofmthe Truwe God, or to fulfill the partial revelation to the pagans. In this picture they are bringing food and water to the Holy Family, in the place of the tradtional angels, signifying their worship of Christ.
In the foreground the ass drinks from the nilometer. Like Joseph, the ass is a symbol of Christian patience. {Valeriano, op.cit. p146}. The true Christian in this picture is rewarded with water from the well, [actually a near-overflowing nilometer, not a well. The comparison I made with Eliezer has here been deleted]. Here the ass is receiving water that symbolized the fertility created by the flooding of the Nile, due, as Rufinus had pointed out, to the grace of the True God. Poussin seems to have restored the nilometer to its original place, beside the temple, but given it its Christian baptismal function.
Dempsey noticed that none of the writers on the Palestrina mosaic, the source of the visual imagery for the Serapis rite in the picture, had been interpreted as such in detail by seventeenth century antiquarians. He suggested that this was Poussin’s contribution to antiquarian thought. This supposes that Poussin thought of the imagery at Palestrina first and then worked a picture round it. It is more likely that he arrived at the ‘concetto’ of the picture, in its allegorical complexity from his reading of Baronius, Casale and the rest, and then searched for imagery by which to represent it. It would be an easy step to the imagery of the mosaic, his idea, since it was a major source of Egyptian antiquities in a general sense. Thus the temples and procession of priests were ideally useful pictorial images for this purpose.
This picture contains antiquarian material, hieroglyphs and religious history and typology. These co-exist easily in Poussin’s picture because of the fundamental inter-relation of all historical and mythical, Christian and pagan, material for Poussin and his contemporaries.
[In retrospect, this text seems to me to outline the contemporary context of antiquarianism and Egypt, with its insistent religious views, which are quite distinct from the scientific and rational archaeology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The interpretation is, in the end, not as fully discussed as I would now like it to be. Nevertheless, as soon as the picture is related to the religio-antiquarianism of Poussin’s time, the Egyptian antiquities begin to make a rather different sense, than that which is in Dempseys’ otherwise useful discussion of 1963].
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May 23, 2005 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, Religion, research | Permalink | Comments (9)
Continuation of Part IV Ch IV of Thesis – [ the Exposition of Moses and the Finding of Moses, the Moses and Aaron before Pharoah, Moses trampling on Phroah’s Crown, as they could have appeared to Poussin’s contemporaries who were familiar with the interpretative framework of Counter-Reformation Biblical commentary and antiquarian knowledge of Egyptian antiquities. Once this context is understood, it is no longer possible to make the common assumption of the 1950s and 1960s, that Poussin’s pictures were designed to appeal to an antiquarian audience that was somehow impervious to religion, because seventeenth century antiquarianism is at all points, as the thesis demonstrates, inseparable from religious concerns].
Poussin painted the Exposition of Moses twice and the Finding of Moses three times. The Exposition of Moses was [could be in Poussin’s time] interpreted as the [a] type of the suffering of Christ and his martyrs, while Moses in the basket among the rushes was compared to Christ in the manger. [The contemporary account would have gone on to show that:] He was discovered by Pharoah’s daughter. (Thermutis was her name according to Josephus). She gave Moses his name which signified ‘saved from the waters’, taken by commentators as meaning ‘saved through baptism’. His mother was interpreted as Synagogue, while Thermutis was the Churcbh of the Gentiles which accepted Christian baptism. Moses in the waters was understood by some as Christ in the ‘waters’ of his Passion and death. In a literal sense, it was believed that Moses was educated by Thermutis, a priestess of Isis
The allegory is of the familiar type, that is met with frequently in the Fathers, in which the essential Christian beliefs are applied to the interpretation of a large number of different Old Testament episodes. All of this interpretation could be easily found in the commentary of Cornelis à Lapide and there was no need for Poussin to have known the many sources from which it was drawn. {Cornelis à Lapide, op.cit.p449}
The Egyptian antiquities in his Expositions and Findings of Moses are a reflection of contemporary interest not only in Egyptian religion, but in the relation between Israel Egypt
It ahs not been remarked that in the later versions of the Finding of Moses, that for Pointel of 1647 and that for Reynon of 1651, Moses’ hand is raised in blessing, while he is admired by the companions of Thermutis. Althouigh the pictures are full of antiquarian detail they must also have been intended to suggest a mystical interpretation, in which Moses is the type of the Christ child adored and accepted by the Church of the Gentiles to which he is giving his blessing.
The scene is given further significance by the hippopotamus hunt on the river. This motif is borrowed from the mosaic at Palestrina, but its significance can best be explained by reference to the hieroglyphs. Pierio Valeriano declard that the Hippopotamus was a hieroglyph for Iniquity. {Pierio Valeriano. Hieroglyphica. Lyon Nile
The complexity of thought in Poussin’s religious paintings began to appear in the moralities on biblical subjects of the 1630s. In the 1640s the Finding of Moses pictures are decidedly Christian in character and appear to have primarily a mystical sense, which the earlier pictures only touch upon lightly.
In the 1640s also, Poussin painted the Moses and Aaron before Pharoah and Moses Trampling on Pharoah’s Crown. Both of these are extremely unusual subjects in painting. The first subject was among the paintings in S.Paolo fuori le Mura and also among those in Raphael’s Loggias. It also occurred with some regularity in Bible illustrations. The second is an episode only recounted by Josephus. {Bk II,97, p267. Thackeray notes that there is a similar account in Midrash on Exodus, II, 10}. This does not mean that it was merely a secular history or that it had no Christian significance. It was included in Berthorius’ Bible Moralisée {Moralitates Bibliorum. In Douai Egypt
There are other reflections of Poussin’s knowledge of Biblical commentary in some of the more unusual motifs in his pictures. In the Crucifixion, for instance, the figure of the resurrected Adam appears at the foot of the Cross. This picture, like the more cryptic pictures of the Moses subjects and the second set of Sacraments, was painted in the 1640s, and suggests even more strongly that in this period Poussin was making full use of the rich and varied information in contemporary Biblical commentary, and probably that of Cornelis à Lapide in particular. The burial of Adam, or, at the very least, his skull, is mentioned by most commentators. Cornelis, however, gives a long account of it. He says that a consensus of opinion of the Fathers acknowledged that Adam’s skull was buried at Calvary Golgotha tanta
The resurrection of Adam in Poussin’s picture must have depended on the information provided by a commentary like this. It is dependent on the intensive revival of patristic mystical thought which originated with the Counter-reformation. Pousin’s motif is a spiritual addition to the picture, not a piece of historical or rational antiquarianism. Poussin’s Crucifixion is largely concerned with the triumph over sin and death implicit in the subject. The piercing of the side with the lance is a major motif of the picture and identifies the moment as that in which the Church and its sacraments were instituted, with the blood and the water that flowed from Christ’s side. Returning once more to the Moses subjects of the 1630s, it will be recalled that the Striking of the Rock and the Manna also refer to Divine Charity, that of Christ’s death, by which the redemptive sacraments were created.
The mode of thought in his pictures is not far removed from Bernini’s devotion to the blood of Christ. Perhaps Poussin’s religious iconography was stimulated by the devotional prayers on the Wounds of Christ. Theese appeared in Books of Hours and were illustrated by several different moments of the Crucifixion. These devotions were adopted by the Jesuits, and were included in some editions of the Shorter Catechism of St Peter Canisius. Not only did Poussin work for the Jesuits in his earlier years in Paris Paris
[The following passage does not now seem to me to be entirely convincing, but I include it anyway]. It is very probable that with a mind in tune with contemporary religious thought, Poussin deliberately chose to use Raphael’s pattern of the anointing of David for the first version of Baptism. [There is also a close relation between Poussin’s painting and the Baptism in Raphael’s Loggias. Formally, however, the figures of St John St John St John St John
The doctrinal importance of the presence of the parallel with the kingdom of David kingdom of God
Although St John
Thus there are liturgical and doctrinal reasons for the inclusion of the dove in this picture. It is one of the [few] manifestations of the supernatural in the second set of Sacraments and Poussin [would have] needed strong reasons for its inclusion. He adhered to the visible world throughout the pictures, as he did in his other religious pictures. He made of the visible an allegory of the invisible, through the actions of those present, through the inclusion of motifs that allow of a spiritual interpretation and through the use of symbols and hieroglyphs.
The use of iconographical patterns derived from Old Testament types of his New Testament scenes is a device for increasing the devotional significance of his scenes. Within his naturalistic presentation there are limitations on the ways in which such divine manifestations can be shown. It would have destroyed the credibility and therefore the unity of his pictures to include glories, just as it would have if he had included minor episodes that did not fit into the time-scheme of his scenes. In Penitence II and Eucharist II the unit of time is not rigid, but the narrative unity is. Although the various parts of the episode that he represents did not all coincide at one moment of time, all of them belong together as aspects of the same theme. He could not include the types of his scenes in a window-frame, as the sixteenth century illustrators had, and he could not use captions. He could only resort to the borrowing of iconographical patterns. These might or might not have been recognizable to his contemporaries, depending on whether they shared Poussin’s knowledge of the iconographical repertory on which he drew. The presence of his these patterns in his work shows his personal involvement in typological thinking. He must have known where to look for his borrowings. The baptism corresponded nointing of David, in meaning. The actions performed on the one occasion not only signified those performed on the other, they could actually look the same. The pattern of one could therefore be transferred to the other. Indeed, it had already been transferred from baptism to anointing by Raphael.
There were several types of ordination which Poussin could have known. He could have seen Moses consecrating Aaron in the Sistine Chapel cycle opposite the Handing of the Keys. He might have been struck by the typology of this in which the parallel was drawn between Christ’s action and Moses’. The same type [Moses consecrating Aaron] in the background of the genre Ordination scene in the Antwerp Jordan Jordan
In Poussin’s picture, Ordination I, Christ is shown as the Law-giver of the Church by Pousin’s visual transposition. The third of the the Eusebian paralles, it will be recalled, implied that ‘Legislator fuit Moses Pentateuch: Christus Evangelis’. The fist of his parallels was that Moses was the lawgiver of the Jews and Christ the law-giver of the whole world.
The Louvre drawing with the TraditioLegis iconography confirms that the parallel was intentional on Poussin’s part. Severani had explained that the scrolls which Christ and the Apostles hold on the sarcophagi and in the catacomb paintings signified that Christ revealed the mysteries of the faith to the Apostles. {Boio, p622} These were made plain by Christ in his life and words. The Bible, which contained the Law, had not been fully understood until Christ cm to fulfil it. The contrast between the New Law and the Old is implicit in Moses breaking the first tablets of the Law in the Golden Calf. The contrast between Synagogue and Church is a theme of the Finding of Moses. The idea of the revelation of the mysteries of the Old Law by Christ in Ordination is a closely related notion.
When Moses presented the Israelites with the second tablets of the Law, hje was allegorically showing them the New Law, which replaced the Old, destroyed eith the breaking of the first tablets. On this second occasion Moses’ face shone with ‘horns’ or ‘rays of light’. He had to cover his face with a veil because the Israelites were blinded by the light which emanated from him. This was interpreted as the blindness of the Israelites, who could not see the truth directly. They could only be shown God’s Law in figures, metaphorically, through a veil.{ Cornelis à Lapide. pp596-597}.
The seventeenth century interpretation of the scrolls and the interpretation of Poussin’s type coincide completely. The inclusion of the scroll hand is vital in providing the clue to Poussin’s meaning.
The Moses type is still present in both versions of Ordination, although the scroll was changed for keys. The motif of the scroll might have been too difficult to understand, even for Poussin’s learned contemporaries. It represented a radical departure from traditional imagery. Further, it only indicated one aspect of ordination. It only showed that Christ gave the apostles the understanding to interpret the Bible and thereby the right to preach. Much else was involved. The powers and rights of the priesthood were more extensive, in particular the power either to remit sins or not remit them. {I.Lorochius. Thesaurus Novus utriusque theologicae theoricae et practicae. Freiburg
Fr. W. von Löhneysen {Die ikonographischen und gesitesgischichtlichen Voraussetzung der “Sieben Sakramente” der Nicolas Poussin. Zetschrift für Religions und Geistesgeschichte, IV,2,1952,pp133-150}claimed that the pictures were papistic, that they did not represent ordinations, that they were rational histories,and that they had no mystical or typological significance. [Anthony Blunt told me he did not think well of this article, but without explanation. It appears to attempt a construction of historical contexts: from which the meaning of the paintings had then to correspond. His analysis of the paintings – and this is slight – simply fits them to these constructs. And the supposition that typology had disappeared in the seventeenth century is quite unfounded.] In effect Poussin’s pictures depend [consistently and heavily, as I have shown] on typology in a way which Löhneysen did not suspect. They have a spiritual or at least symbolic meaning, which is not at first apparent. They are therefore not ‘rationalist histories’, as he claimed. They represent Ordination scenes, in which the meaning of ordination is more fully expressed than in any possible genre scene, or in any of the possible Biblical ordinations. It is, however, true that they take the side of the Roman church in the question of the primacy of St Peter, and hence of the Pope.
This was one of the most hotly debated of all controversies between Catholic and Protestant. The Protestants had argued that the passage in St Matthew’s Gospel on which Poussin’s picture is based demonstrated that Christ had ordained each of the Apostles, not only St Peter. All the apostles, therefore, could be said to have keys. They all had the same rights by this argument. The Catholics admitted that the other Apostles acquired rights and powers like those of St Peter in most respects, because after being ordained, St Peter then ordained the rest. The primacy argument hinged on the interpretation of Christ’s words ‘tu es Petrus, & super hance petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam’. {Matthew, XIV,18}. The linguistic complexities of this phrase occupied many pages in the famous (or infamous) ‘De Primatu Papae’ of C. Salmasius, Leiden
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May 19, 2005 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, Religion, research | Permalink | Comments (7)
Interlude – this is a variant of something I scribbled down for a friend recently, trying to summarize the positions I’m taking here: Panofsky style iconology [in its American phase] & Blunt’s determination to locate Poussin’s beliefs [his ‘mind’, or his ‘thought’] has misled pretty well everyone, myself included. The attempt to make the ‘philosophical’ Poussin into someone with a philosophical doctrine [goes back to 1660s, I know] is the trouble: hence the attempts to ‘make’ him into a stoic a libertin a covert protestant !? or a messenger boy for secret mystical organizations [extra silly], all these begin to seem irrelevant biographical fantasies. Question, for a painter, always and only is how do the artworks work -- & I’ve no doubt NPs can work as well now as ever – given a recovery of the context not only of their historical iconography [both ideological placement & symbolism] but also of their functioning as things to look at -- & while the latter is what I find most delightful in them, it is important to recognize that that is exactly what a painter has to ‘design’, ‘compose’, ‘think up’, ‘think of’, all the while estimating the effect on his/her imagined audience, posited as somewhere else and ‘Other’-wise. I am not finally unconvinced by the attempts to treat paintings semiotically as things to be read, turning them into pseudo-texts. That ignores precisely the information in them put there by someone who knew they were things to be looked at, as I have been saying [i.e. would occupy & fill the visual field with its artifices, appearances, illusions, tricks even, and its play with the conventions that make up its mimesis]. So the question is rather what is the ‘poetics’ of paintings [in the broadest sense of the word] rather than what is the author’s philosophical belief system or doctrines [about ‘life’ and how to live it]. Finally, painting is a poor medium for philosophical statement: too little in the way of appropriate meaning for this purpose and too much else going on that is to do with appearances and their production. There is a general remark to make regarding this thesis. Irrespective of Poussin’s personal beliefs and doctrinal investments, whatever they were in fact, the religious paintings seem to offer themselves to the kind of interpretation that learned and devout contemporaries would be able to bring to them, including the Jesuit educated Chambray and Chantelou brothers from Le Mans, where the Jesuits had an important college. Poussin must have known enough to make this possible, though that does not mean that his beliefs or his thoughts concerning doctrine are thereby made clear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Part 4 of Chapter IV. Poussin’s Typology . [There are often no footnotes in the general discussion of typology in the thesis, but I presumed at that time that any reasonable person would find that what I had said was firmly and honestly based on what I had found in the texts. Further, it was not my intention to write a thesis about 17th century religious literature, but about Poussin’s paintings. Of course, over 35 years on I can see all too clearly the weaknesses of argument and the clumsiness of the writing. Nonetheless I have not attempted to make corrections]. Now read on We have already seen that in the popular tradition of the illustrated catechisms of the later sixteenth century mystical typology was gradually replaced by a system of moralizing Biblical emblems. [ Chapter III, part IV and in the Poussin Sacraments book pp 97 – 105]. These little books are very like the secular emblem books of the period. The difference is that in the emblem books the pictorial image was accompanied by a short explanatory text while in the Catechisms the pictorial imagery was accompanied only by captions. The text was provided by the oral explanations of the catechist. [This is a guess, but not unreasonable. It is how Sunday-School picture books usually work]. Typology was not extinct in the seventeenth century. There was an attempt to purge Christian interpretation of the Bible of profane material and of all-inclusive typology of the later middle ages. There was also a strenuous move to put an end to Christian typological interpretation of pagan authors, like Ovid and Virgil. The Biblical commentators of the counter-reformation tried to restrict the use of mystical and moral interpretation to that justified by Christ’s words in the Gospels, St Paul The purge was not absolute. Outside the canon of the scriptures laid down by the Council of Trent, which included all the Pauline epistles, and several books now regarded as apocryphal, like the book of Tobit, there were one or two Jewish writers of antiquity whose writings were still treated as authoritative in some degree. Philo’s commentaries were widely used, just as they had been by the early Fathers. Josephus was also frequently consulted on details of history, not only of his own times but on those of Moses also. In the middle age several episodes in the life of Moses recounted only by Josephus found their way into typological imagery, like Moses Trampling on Pharoah’s Crown, which appears in the Speculum Humanae Salvationis. The same subject was given a mystical interpretation in the mediaeval compendium of Pierre Bercheur (Berthorius), whose works were often reprinted as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Seventeenth century editions of his collected works tended to omit his Bible Moralisée, however, probably because he interpreted every incident in the whole Bible. Josephus was still respected in the seventeenth century, however. It was widely believed that he had testified to the Divinity of Christ and that his writings therefore had some semblance of revelation about them. It is not unusual to find stoic writers quoted in arguments about the moral meaning of many Bible events, as if pagan antiquity sometimes provided support to Christian morality. Typological thought flourished in the many Bible commentaries of the Counter-reformation. The older generation of Jesuits used it with some caution, but Cornelis Steen (Cornelis à Lapide) used it very fully in his complete Bible commentary of the early seventeenth century. [In my margin at a later date I have written “Canon 35 re- Prophecy”, which is to say Council of Trent authority for typology]. His was the only complete Bible commentary of the period and was widely acclaimed as a monumental achievement. Some of the volumes were dedicate to Cardiunal Francesco Barberini. The volumes appeared slowly in the course of the first half of the seventeenth century. Other forms of devotional publication used mystical figures with great frequency. This kind of attitude to the Bible was not opposed to historical thought, but as has already been pointed out, it was an integral part of the historical system that prevailed in religious circles in the earlier seventeenth century, a survival of mediaeval belief. [See Erich Auerbach: Mimesis. Princeton [-- paragraph omitted – ] Four kinds of interpretation were specified by Cornelis and his contemporaries; literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical [as was required by the Council of Trent]. In the early of the Church the cycles of pictures in the roman Basilicas had placed Old Testament type opposite New Testament antitype. Cycles of this sort existed also in the middle ages and indeed in the sixteenth century. In some cycles not in churches, like the Raphael Loggias, biblical scenes are unaccompanied by their explanatory antitypes, but nevertheless in an age of moralised Bibles, it would not have been hard to recognize the allegorical significance of the scenes represented. Nearly all the Old Testament scenes in the Loggias are important typological examples and were almost certainly understood as such. We have already encountered two such occasions on which Popussin appears to have borrowed imagery got his Sacraments from scenes showing their Old Testament types. [the Raphael Loggias Anointing of David for Baptism I, and S.Maria Maggiore mosaic of Moses giving the Law for Ordination I] . He also painted many Old Testament scenes by themselves, in single easel pictures which stood alone, without New Testament antitypes. In particular, he painted a great many scenes from the life of Moses, all of which might have been intended to carry, at the least, allegorical interpretation. If, as one suspects, some of these in the 1640s have a mystical sense, it is more than likely that his employment of Old Testament scenes as iconographical patterns for the Sacraments was deliberate. There are many possible sources from which Poussin could have gained a knowledge not only of current interpretation, but also of early patristic ideas. [Blunt believed that Poussin’s typology would have come from reading the patristic sources. There are obvious difficulties with this: the time it would have taken and Poussin’s lack of Greek and inexpert Latin (according to Bellori)] Besides the Biblical commentaries, there was the commentary by Severani at the end of Roma Sotterrranea on the imagery of the early Christian scenes of the catacombs and the sarcophagi. {Bosio. Bk IV., Ch VI ff.}This, in Italian, not in Latin, in a book Poussin certainly knew, could have been a most useful source of information. In the commentaries an even wider range of interpretative material was available and Poussin could well have used a copy of Cornelis à Lapide, the most up-to-date and the most complete of contemporary works. Corneli sin particular enlarged on the parallels between Christ and Moses. He listed and summarized the nineteen poarlalles of Eusebius. One of the most important of these for Poussin, as we shall see, was expressed by Cornelis:”Legislator fuit Moses Pentateuch: Christus Evangelis.” , corresponding to the third of Eusebius’s parallels. {Commnetaria in Pentateuchum Mosis. Antwerp Antwerp Bellori remarked on the frequency with which Poussin painted Moses striking the Rock {1728 edition, p173}. He stressed the point that Poussin continually invented new figures and new arrangements to express the variety of the affetti in this subject. In all versions Poussin placed Moses and Aaron in the middle ground, reserving the foreground for his many, varied figures of anonymous Israelites. The effect of the miracle and the interpretation given to the subject is expressed chiefly by these foreground figures, rather than by the chief actors, Moses and Aaron. In the first surviving version, that in the Bridgewater Antwerp St Augustine Poussin’s means of expression are not transcendental symbolism, but the expression of spiritual themes through human actions. Behind his moralities lie the spiritual realities which activate them. The same kind of process can be seen in the Manna. This was universally accepted as a type of the Eucharist. The elements are similar to those in Moses Striking the Rock. There are suffering Israelites, starving in the wilderness, figure praying for food, giving praise for the miracle and some offering the manna to those in greater need than they. The variety of types, ages and actions in this picture is even more remarkable than in the Moses Striking he Rock. Poussin draws attention to the variety of the figures in his letter to Chantelou concerning the picture, in which he proposed that the picture should be read figure by figure. {Lettres. Ed. P. du Colombier. Paris We have already encountered this method of constructing pictures in Bernini’s examination of the Sacraments and in Bellori’s elaborate descriptions of figure action in his Vite. In thiosd picture the composition is made upo of so many dispersed elements that it is a t first very difficult to make out what it is a bout. It is only when the method of reading the picture figure by figure is followed that the picture makes sense. Once more, Moses and Aaron are in the middle ground and the whole content of the picture is expressed through the actions of the anonymous Israelites in the foreground. These are divided into two groups. In the left foreground are Israelites unaware of the miracle that is taking place. They are shown as too weak to move. A turbaned man lies on the ground, resting his head on his hand. In front of him is a Caritas Romana group, which derives from one of the moralities in Valerius Maximus, not from the story of Cimon and Pero, but from the immediately preceding one which a young woman suckles an older one. {Valerius Maximus. Factorum et dictorum memorabilium. Lib. V, Ch IV, s.% ed C Kempfius. Berlin On the right there is one corresponding figure, a young woman who points to the distressed figure behind her. The right hand group is concerned with the gathering of the manna. Two struggling boys demonstrate the dominance of the passions in the young, ho are unaware that there is enough manna to satisfy the needs of all. Some gather manna for themselves. The young woman in the foreground, however, points to those in distress who are unable to gather food for themselves, and directs a boy to carry food to them, before she satisfies her on needs. The background is reserved for figures expressing praise and wonder. This subject was thought of as the type of the Eucharistic Bread, the broken body of Christ, sacrificed willingly through God’s Charity for the salvation of mankind. As in the Moses Striking the Rock, Poussin expresses the Charity implicit in the scene through the charitable actions of his figures. These pictures are presented as moral emblemata, but their emblematic moral meaning is that suggested by mystical interpretation, not by merely ethical or moral considerations. These two pictures were painted in the 1630’s and two other Moses subjects of the same period suggest that Poussin was more often concerned with presenting emblemata in his Biblical subjects, only secondarily with typological examples with specifically mystical meanings. The Red Sea Crossing and the Golden Calf were painted for Cassiano’s cousin, Amadeo dal Pozzo, at some time in the 1630s. They were accompanied by two pictures by Pietro da Cortona [discussed in recent years, though still unknown in the 1960s]. The Red Sea Crossing does not concentrate on the crossing itself but on the events immediately after it. In the background is the song of Miriam and the dance of her maidens. This was sometimes the subject of a separate Bible illustration in the sixteent h century {Biblia Sacra, Rouvilly, Lyon 1562} [with illustrations by Eskrich, discussed in an earlier chapter on book illustration and Poussin]. In the middle ground, the Israelites are thanking God for, their Salvation, while in the immediate foreground is the only reference in the picture to the overthrow of the Egyptians. Young men are ]dragging some bodies from the sea to strip them of their armour. This foreground part of the scene depends on Josephus’ account of the event. It is not to be found in the Bible, though there is a related passage. Josephus pointed out that the stripping of the Egyptians was the means by which the Israelites were enriched, and thus able to defend themselves in the Wilderness. {Josephus. Jewish Antiquities. Bks I-IV, London New York Egypt Red Sea The Crossing of the Red Sea In the Golden Calf Moses breaks the first tablets of the Law, while the Israelites in the foreground, under the leadership of Aaron, worship the bull-god. They made this by melting down their precious metal ornaments. The idolatrous worship of the bull, the Egyptian god Apis, as the commentators pointed out, can only have signified the misuse of the (allegorical) riches acquired from the Egyptians. These, it will be remembered, in the Bible were in the literal sense jewels and ornaments of gold and silver. While the Egyptians were regarded as possessing wisdom and eloquence, which the Israelites carried off, they had also perverted wisdom by worshipping idols. The Israelites acquired this from the Egyptians also. The two pictures therefore point to both aspects of the significance of Egyptian learning. There is further significance in the pictures [possible because current in commentary]. In the Red Sea Crossing, the Israelites are thanking God for their Salvation, in the Golden Calf, they are showing their ingratitude to God, who brought them out of slavery. Moses breaking the Tablets, because of their ingratitude, signified the destruction of then Old Law, prior to the coming of the New. Thus the two pictures [could] form an allegory of Faith and Salvation, in which the typological significance plays a minor role. The references to Egyptian wisdom and the moral interpretation of the idolatry of the Israelites are the major motifs, while both contain references to the institution of the New Law. [To be continued, with discussion of the Finding of Moses pictures, Moses and Aaron before Pharoah, Moses Trampling on Pharoah’s Crown, & The Crucifixion]
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May 09, 2005 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, Religion, research | Permalink | Comments (13)
SECOND PART of
copy of parts of Chapter IV from ‘NICOLAS POUSSIN & THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS’ 1968. PhD thesis , University of Edinburgh
2. The triclinium & early Christian ritual in the Sacraments.
[A substantial part of this appears in revised (&, I believe, improved) form in my book ‘Nicolas Poussin paints the Seven Sacraments twice’, Paravail, 2000. Its starting point is the well-known article by Anthony Blunt, The triclinium in religious art, Journal of the Warburg Institute, II, 1938-1939, pp 271 ff. After reading through the sources he mentioned, I added one more: by the Jesuit J. Burlengerius (Boulenger) De Convivii libri quatuor. Lyon Leiden University of Edinburgh Library
I omit the summary of the history of the literary sources, beginning with the revival of Vitruvius, G. Mercuriale’s, De Arte Gymnastica of 1569, with later editions in 1573 and the B.M.’s 1601 which I used.
The main thrust of the thesis was towards restoring to Poussin what was almost everywhere being denied him in the post-WWII years, that the paintings had any serious connection with religious thought. Poussin’s mind was submitted to a process of ideological x-ray and found to be rationalistic, probably libertin, formalistic, Stoical, and antiquarian. The usual sources that had been cited were the well-known classical Roman sarcophagi with the Death of Meleager and Renaissance painting, which tended to support this view. Thus his mind was supposed far removed from irrational, mystical, typological, superstitious Baroque religiosity.
This was, in my view, a crippled position from which to write about the paintings of the Seven Sacraments. As it turned out, with a little research, important sources both visual and literary for the paintings were certainly to be found in Jesuit inspired book-illustrations of the Sacraments, in the illustrations of those remains of early Christian antiquity regarded as holy relics, the catacomb paintings and sarcophagi, in G.Bosio’s Roma Sotterranea; and possibly in the mosaics in S.Maria Maggiore and the wall-paintings in S.Paolo fuori le Mura. That some of these were dependent on drawings in Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Museum Cartaceum, I did not then know. It will now be seen how much of the imagery of the Sacraments paintings that had been ascribed to pure antiquarianism, to satisfy the supposed desires of his patrons, was in fact inspired by an antiquarianism that served definite purposes in the Propaganda Fide of the Counter-Reformation, especially in the Biblical commentaries and the closely related antiquarian discourse of the Jesuits and Oratorians.
It was several years before I realized that this research, while showing another side to Poussin’s sources, did not address the more fundamental issue, that it is doubtful whether what was found by this kind of x-ray technique was indeed the mind of the painter. It can, in my view, only do so, when it traces how the source material is brought to bear on the process of painting. That issue was everywhere evaded.
Now, as they say, read on.]
The additional plates in the later editions of De Arte Gymnastica were included to illustrate an addendum to the text. Mercuriale showed that the literature on the triclinium had become very extensive since his first edition. He mentions by name a number of Jesuits who had adopted his ideas for the illustration of Gospel scenes. The Cardinal of Toledo Rome Vatican London Naples
The Jesuits had be primarily concerned with the interpretation of the feasts in the Bible, and of the Last Supper and the Feast in the House of Simon in particular. Mercuriale’s purpose had been a medical one and his addendum in his later edition merely summarized the arguments of the theologians. His intention was plainly to confirm his general argument about the triclinium. Theirs was to arrive at the theological meaning of the Gospel texts.
Mercuriale’s treatise was one of the main points of departure for the dissemination of the triclinium motif in Europe counter-reformation Church
[The detailed discussion of the triclinium motif & the following section 3 on Penitence and foot-washing ceremonies appear in revised form in my Poussin’s Sacraments book. I will add to this soon the long section 4 “Poussin’s typology” which was largely omitted from the book, since it has much to do with the Moses pictures and Egyptian antiquities.]
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May 08, 2005 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, Religion, research | Permalink | Comments (8)
FIRST PART of
Copy of Chapter IV from ‘NICOLAS POUSSIN & THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS’ 1968. PhD thesis , University of Edinburgh
I have corrected one or two errors in spelling and grammar without comment. In the normal process of thesis writing, these would have been corrected before the manuscript was submitted. In respect of this, I should note that entirely contrary to present practice, my supervisors, Giles Robertson and David Talbot-Rice were supervisors in name only. I had only one formal meeting, with David Talbot-Rice, in which I asked him for guidance in the literature on early Christian art. Apart from occasional informal discussion with Giles Robertson, at lunch-time, I received no suggestions from them of directions or procedures; and no reading of my manuscript prior to its submission.
3 May 05
CEREMONY AND SETTING IN THE SACRAMENTS.
Bosio’s ‘Roma Sotterranea’ [Rome, 1632. Possible borrowings by Poussin from its images and text were discussed in Chapter III] was a product of only one current in the stream of Counter-Reformation thought. There were several others, which also affected Poussin’s religious painting. Not only was he aware of the newly excavated monuments of Christian antiquity, he also made use of literary material for the reconstruction of early Christian ‘costume’, especially in the paintings of “Eucharist’ and ‘Penitence’.
The traditions on which he drew had their origins in the Counter-Reformation. The religious controversy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a most important stimulus to the study of antiquity. It was clear that the only true Faith could be that which was intended by the Gospels, the acts, and whatever could be learned of the practices and beliefs of the early Church. There was an intense interest in all aspects of Christian antiquity. Patristic writing, historical, canonical, and mystical was explored with great vigour, in the search for evidence. The Council of Trent had defined the proper means for interpretation of the fundamental document, the Bible. The only authority was the consensus of the opinion of the Fathers of the Church. Biblical commentary flourished, and two kinds of study flourished with it: typology and antiquarianism. The mystical interpretations of patristic writing were cited in detail. The exploration of all available ancient monuments and all ancient writers, pagan and Christian alike, was pressed into service to explain references to ceremony, dress and all the other aspects of life in antiquity.
All antiquity was scoured for information. Even the wroks of Julian the Apostate were translated and edited. The second of these editions in France Europe
It was plain to the writers of this period that pagan and Christian antiquity were closely related. Pagan and Christian ritual, ceremony and symbolism belonged together in the same broad scheme of religious history, the history of redemption, unified by the eternity of the Godhead. It was widely believed that there had been a partial revelation of the nature of the Divine Being to the pagans and to the Jews. {Council of Trent Venice Paris Leipzig
This view of history made it possible to interpret antique symbolism and hieroglyphs as representations of Christian truth that had not been completely understood by the pagans. The Old Testament could be interpreted in the same way with respect to the Jews. The patristic systems of typology were thus perpetuated side by side with the humanistic tradition of interpretation of ancient religion. Antique ritual and worship in this system foreshadowed the Christian religion which had in the end superceded it.
There was no question of comparing pagan religion and Christianity on equal terms for Christians in this period. There was no modern concept of a collective unconscious to explain away Christianity as a manifestation akin to all other religious manifestations. Even the skepticism of the ‘libertins’ and the search for a moral law in nature or in reason had not undermined this system of belief by the mid-seventeenth century for the vast majority of writers.
The antiquarian tradition in which Poussin’s ‘sacraments’ lie is that of the Counter-Reformation. The triclinium motif was largely the preserve of the Jesuits. Msny of Poussin’;s religious pictures still depend on the typology that the biblical commentators revived. The hieroglyphs that he introduced, especially the ‘E’ on the pillar in ‘Ordination II’ have a specifically Christian significance. All thee aspects enrich the meaning of his pictures, antiquarianism, typology and symbolism.
[The breadth of this brief introduction to the chapter depended on generalization from a mass of 16th and 17th reading I had undertaken in the University Library, which was rich in books of the period. Citation of sources and a more detailed argument – as desirable as they seem now -- would have exceeded the bounds of my thesis and become a study in its own right. At that time, it was possible to borrow a key to the book cupboards and browse through the pre-19th century books in the beautiful Upper Library Hall designed by Playfair. I took full advantage of this. There was no difficulty about borrowing these books, other than the great weight of the large folios of Biblical commentary. During the weeks in which I completed my thesis I had about twenty of these 16th and 17th century books on my desk to refer to as I wrote.]
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May 03, 2005 in POUSSIN PAINTINGS, Religion, research | Permalink | Comments (16)
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