Nicolas Poussin: ideal of the art academies
“With such eyes did Michelangelo, Raphael and Poussin see the works of the ancients. They partook of good taste at its source” ( Art in Theory 451). These words of Johann Winckelmann (1717-68), art historian and promoter of Neoclassicism, show how highly the works of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) were regarded in art academies. Winckelmann makes the assumption that “classic” art - the art of Greece and Rome, the High Renaissance and Poussin - is aesthetically superior and a standard of beauty for all time. We must consider the reasons why Poussin achieved such high status. Winckelmann disliked Baroque art, which he thought decadent and vulgar. And Poussin, although working in the Baroque period, is not a typically Baroque artist, since in most (but not all) of his works he adopts a more restrained and classical style. Poussin said of himself that “my nature compels me to seek and love things that are well-ordered, fleeing confusion” (Blunt Poussin 175). Thus Poussin tends to esch...