Poussin and the arts of history

Abstract

Modern scholarship bas characterized Nicolas Poussin's history paintings as concerned with exacting archaeological accuracy. Walter Friedlaender and Anthony Blunt, who pioneered the study of Poussin's intellectual context as a means of interpreting his work, understood the artist's interest in history as that of an antiquarian, concerned above all with the accurate depiction of historical detail. Yet it has long been noted that not all Poussin's histories fulfill this claim. In raising the issue of Poussin as a historian, my aim is not so much to dispute past interpretation, but to add a further dimension. By placing Poussin's history paintings within a broader analysis of Counter-Reformation culture, I hope to shed light both on thcir narrative structure and didactic intent. Specifically, I will argue tbat contemporary history writing patronized by thc Church provides an appropriate complex of ideas through which to analyze Poussin's historical work. How to write history, and to what end, was under intense discussion in the seventeenth century. Poussin's history paintings formed part of this debate.1

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