Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [47]
FRENCH BAROQUE
In the seventeenth century, France was the most powerful country in Europe, and Louis XIV tapped the finest talents to glorify his monarchy with a palace of unparalleled splendor. With the coming of Versailles, France replaced Rome as the center of European art (a distinction it retained until World War II), even as it modeled its art on Roman relics.
POUSSIN: MASTER OF COMPOSITION. The most famous French painter of the seventeenth century, Nicolas Poussin (pronounced poo SAHN; 1594-1665), worked not in France but in Rome. Passionately interested in antiquity, he based his paintings on ancient Roman myths, history, and Greek sculpture. The widespread influence of Poussin’s work revived this ancient style, which became the dominant artistic influence for the next 200 years.
Poussin took Classical rationalism so seriously that, when Louis XIII summoned him to Paris to paint a Louvre ceiling fresco, he refused to conform to the prevailing code of soaring saints. People don’t fly through the air, he insisted with faultless logic, thus losing the commission and returning to his beloved Roman ruins.
Left to his own devices, Poussin chose to paint in what he called “la maniera magnifica” (the grand manner). Or, as he put it, “The first requirement, fundamental to all others, is that the subject and the narrative be grandiose, such as battles, heroic actions, and religious themes.” The artist must shun “low” subjects. Those who didn’t avoid everyday life (like Caravaggio, whom he detested) “find refuge in [base subjects], because of the feebleness of their talents.”
Poussin’s work exerted enormous influence on the course of French (and, therefore, world) art for the next two centuries because all artists were trained in “Poussinism,” an institutionalized Classicism.
CLAUDE: NATURE AS IDEAL. After Poussin, the best known French Baroque painter was Claude Lorrain (1600 — 82), known simply as Claude. Like Poussin, Claude was drawn to Italy, where he painted idyllic scenes of the Italian countryside. Where the two differed was in their inspiration, for Claude was inspired less by Classical forms than by nature itself and the serene light of dawn and dusk that unified his canvases. Claude lived for extended periods among shepherds, sketching trees, hills, and romantic ruins of the Italian campagna in the early morning or late afternoon. His paintings were typically arranged with dark, majestic trees forming a partial arch that framed a radiant countryside view and intensified the central light. Claude had no interest in the tiny human figures that inhabited his countrysides; their only purpose was to establish scale for the natural elements. Indeed, he paid other artists to paint them for him.
Poussin, “Burial of Phocion,” 1648, Louvre, Paris. Poussin’s balanced, orderly scenes shaped Western art for 200 years.
VERSAILLES: PALACE OF POMP. The pinnacle of Baroque opulence was the magnificent chateau of Versailles, transformed from a modest hunting lodge to the largest palace in the world. It was a tribute to the ambition of one man, King Louis XIV (1638-1715), who aspired, it was said, “beyond the sumptuous to the stupendous.” “L‘état c’est moi” (I am the state), said the absolute monarch known as the “Sun King.” Surrounded by an entourage of 2,000 nobles and 18,000 soldiers and servants, Louis created a total environment of ostentatious luxury, designed to impress visitors with the splendor of both France and his royal self.
Versailles’ hundreds of rooms were adorned with crystal chandeliers, multicolored marble, solid-silver furniture, and crimson velvet hangings embroidered in gold. The king himself, covered