The Subject of Poussin's 'Landscape with a Woman Bathing' in Ottawa

• Autores: Ann Sutherland-Harris
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 145, Nº 1201, 2003, págs. 292-296
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Nicolas Poussin's landscape paintings stand apart from those of his contemporaries not only for the grandeur of their designs but also for the complexity of their subject-matter. With few excep- tions, they share the dimensions of his history paintings, and thus are considerably larger than most examples of this genre produced in seventeenth-century Europe. Only the landscapes by his fellow French expatriate in Rome, Claude Lorrain, rival them in ambition, scale and thematic richness. The subjects that Poussin introduced into these majestic vistas are frequently new to the genre - Pyramus and Thisbe, Orpheus and Eurydice, the giant Orion searching for the sun, Ruth amid the alien corn - and some remain unique. Lacking the detailed classical training of earlier centuries, few educated modem viewers would know about the Athenian general Phocion had not his betrayal, death, burial and eventual exoneration inspired two of Poussin's greatest landscape paintings.' If the search of the cynic philosopher Diogenes for an honest man is familiar enough to inspire a joke in the New Yorker, where he once appeared searching with his lantern for an honest dealer amid a wasteland of used car lots, his philosophical epiphany on seeing a boy drink water from his hands, thus rendering even the possession of a bowl unnecessary, is not part of our popular mythological culture. Even Poussin's public had rarely seen this moment portrayed and never in so grand a landscape setting as in Poussin's depiction of the theme (Louvre, Paris).