He learned all he
knew of art, he said, from the Bacchus Torso at Naples. But he was
eclectic rather than imitative, and certainly used the material he found
in the works of his artistic ancestors as freely and personally as
Raphael the frescos of the Baths of Titus, or Donatello the fragments of
antique sculpture. From his time on, indeed, French painting dropped its
Italian leading-strings. He might often suggest Raphael--and any painter
who suggests Raphael inevitably suffers for it--but always with an
individual, a native, a French difference, and he is as far removed in
spirit and essence from the Fontainebleau school as the French genius
itself is from the Italian which presided there. In Poussin, indeed,
the French genius first asserts itself in painting. And it asserts
itself splendidly in him.
We who ask to be moved as well as impressed, who demand satisfaction of
the susceptibility as well as--shall we say rather than?--interest of
the intelligence, may feel that for the qualities in which Poussin is
lacking those in which he is rich afford no compensation whatever.
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