Related info with this topic

Nicolas Poussin (15 June 1594?November 19, 1665) was a French painter, the founder and greatest practitioner of 17th century French classical painting. His work embodies the virtues of clarity, logic, and order. Until the 20th century he remained the dominant inspiration for such classically oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David and Paul Cézanne. He spent most of his working life in Rome except for a short period when Cardinal Richelieu ordered him back to France as Painter for the King.
Life
He was born near Les Andelys, now in the Eure département, in Normandy. Early sketches attracted the notice of Quentin Varin, a local painter, whose pupil Poussin became, until he went to Paris, where he entered the studios of the Flemish painter Ferdinand Elle and then of Georges Lallemand, both minor masters now remembered for having tutored Poussin. He found French art in a stage of transition: the old apprenticeship system was disturbed, and the academic training destined to supplant it was not yet established by Simon Vouet; but having met Courtois the mathematician, Poussin was fired by the study of his collection of engravings after Italian masters.

After two abortive attempts to reach Rome, he fell in with Marini, the court poet to Marie de Medici at Lyon. Marini employed him on illustrations to his poems, took him into his household, and in 1624 enabled Poussin (who had been detained by commissions in Lyon and Paris) to rejoin him at Rome. There, his patron having died, Poussin fell into great distress. Falling ill, he was received into the house of his compatriot Gaspard Dughet and nursed by his daughter Anna Maria to whom, in 1629, Poussin was married.

Poussin's Tancred and Erminia (Hermitage Museum) nicely illustrates his preoccupation with geometrical composition.He lodged ......

[ read all story ]