Volume 10, Number 3 · February 15, 1968
Super-Painter
By Francis Haskell
Nicolas Poussin (A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts)
by Sir Anthony Blunt
Princeton, Bollingen Series, Vol. 2, 265 (plates) pp., $25.00
The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Study
by Sir Anthony Blunt
Phaidon, 272 (218 illustrations) pp., $25.00
Poussin
by Sir Anthony Blunt
Knowledge Publications (The Masters Series), 32 (16 color plates) pp., 6 s.
Nicolas Poussin: Lettres et propos sur l'art
compiled by Sir Anthony Blunt
Hermann (Miroirs de l'Art), 196 pp., 6 francs
Poussin
by Walter Friedlaender
Abrams (Library of Great Painters Series), 198 (175 illustrations, 48 color plates) pp., $20.00
Le voir et le savoir—essai sur Nicolas Poussin
by Pierre Schneider
Mercure de France, 80 pp., 12 francs
In 1960 three large galleries in the Louvre were hung with 120 pictures and 120 drawings by Nicolas Poussin; the occasion remains in the memories of many of those who witnessed it as the most exciting of all the countless exhibitions that have been held anywhere since the war. It is odd that this should be so. Poussin has not been a discovery of our century like Caravaggio whose dramatic exhibition in Milan nine years earlier first brought him to the attention of a wide public, nor did he, as Caravaggio did, bring into being a train of distinguished followers who not only changed the course of European art but made us look with new eyes at apparently remote painters such as Vermeer. 'Here is a man who paints with the fury of the devil,' said the poet Marino when he introduced Poussin to Roman society in 1624, and ever since then, almost without interruption, he has been spoken of with admiration—though, alas, it was not always expressed in such infectious terms.
Review, 2712 words
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