But, superficially, his scheme wore the classic aspect, and neither his
contemporaries nor his successors, for over two hundred years,
discovered the immense value of his point of view, and the puissant
charm of his way of rendering nature.
Poussin, however, was the incarnation of the classic spirit, and perhaps
the reason why a disinterested foreigner finds it difficult to
appreciate the French estimate of him is that no foreigner, however
disinterested, can quite appreciate the French appreciation of the
classic spirit in and for itself. But when one listens to expressions of
admiration for the one French "old master," as one may call Poussin
without invidiousness, it is impossible not to scent chauvinism, as one
scents it in the German panegyrics of Goethe, for example. He was a very
great painter, beyond doubt. And as there were great men before
Agamemnon there have been great painters since Raphael and Titian, even
since Rembrandt and Velasquez. He had a strenuous personality, moreover.
You know a Poussin at once when you see it.
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