POUSSIN AND THE POETICS OF PAINTING

PICTORIAL NARRATIVE AND THE LEGACY OF TASSO

Poussin and the Poetics of Painting examines how Poussin cultivated a poetics of painting from the literary culture of his own time, and especially through his response to the work of Torquato Tasso. Tasso’s poetic discourses were the most important source for Poussin’s theory of painting. The poet’s ideas on artistic imitation, novelty, and plot structure and unity, which are exemplified in his epic La Gerusalemme liberata, proved to be fundamental to the artist’s conception of narrative painting, culminating in the Israelites Gathering Manna. In the paintings after the Gerusalemme, Poussin does not merely illustrate Tasso’s verse, but creates pictorial means to refashion the poet’s metaphors of desire. The interplay of poetic and painterly imagery also animates Poussin’s Ovidian masterpieces, the Echo and Narcissus and the Realm of Flora. Offering new interpretations of these works, this book also investigates Poussin’s larger literary culture and how this context illuminates the artist’s response to contemporary poetic texts, especially in his mythological paintings.

Jonathan Unglaub is assistant professor of fine arts at Brandeis University. A scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art, he has contributed to The Art Bulletin and The Burlington Magazine, and he has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), the Getty Humanities Center, and the Clark Art Institute.

POUSSIN AND THE POETICS OF PAINTING

PICTORIAL NARRATIVE AND THE LEGACY OF TASSO

JONATHAN UNGLAUB
Brandeis University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521833677

© Jonathan Unglaub 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2006

Printed in Hong Kong by Golden Cup

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Unglaub, Jonathan.
Poussin and the poetics of painting : pictorial narrative and the Legacy of
Tasso / Jonathan Unglaub.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-83367-7 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 0-521-83367-1 (hardback)
1. Poussin, Nicolas, 1594?–1665 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Narrative painting, French –
17th century. 3. Ut pictura poesis (Aesthetics) 4. Tasso, Torquato, 1544–1595. Gerusalemme
liberata. 5. Tasso, Torquato, 1544–1595 – Influence. 6. Art and literature. I. Poussin, Nicolas,
1594?–1665. II. Title.
ND553.P8U54    2005
759.4 – dc22    2005020605

ISBN-13 978-0-521-83367-7 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-83367-1 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To my parents

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOR PLATES

Color plates appear after page xvi

FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has gone through a lengthy period of gestation, revision, and distillation, and I have debts to gratefully acknowledge every step of the way. It began as the larger part of my doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, completed in 1999. David Freedberg, my advisor, offered continual support, stimulation, and encouragement. His Poussin seminar of 1993 first exposed me to the artist in an intellectual way, got me hooked, and led ultimately to this topic. David Rosand also fostered this project. I am indebted to both professors for providing models of teaching, scholarship, and mentoring. My gratitude goes to the other members of the dissertation committee: Joseph Connors, James Mirollo, and Charles Dempsey. Their insightful comments have helped shape the book. It goes without saying that Dempsey’s scholarship has been seminal to my understanding of Poussin. Another Poussiniste, Sheila McTighe, helped cultivate my ideas early on.

   This project has benefited from generous institutional support, for which I am profoundly grateful. During the dissertation stage, a Fulbright grant funded two years of research in Rome. A Mellon fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave me ample time and an inspiring environment for writing. A Lemmerman travel grant allowed me to return to Rome in 2000, to continue research. In 2001–2, a Getty postdoctoral grant gave me the time to transform the dissertation into a book. The Getty also enabled me to return abroad, where I was a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome before embarking on a European Poussin tour. Although awarded for different projects, the final production stages encroached upon a fellowship at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in 2005. I am most thankful to Michael Ann Holly and Mark Ledbury for such an ideal, and idyllic, environment to complete my work.

   My home institution, Brandeis University, has been unstintingly supportive. Tomberg junior faculty research funds partly financed the acquisition of photographs and rights, as well as the subvention for color plates; the balance materialized from the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences. I am indebted to Dean Jesse Ann Owens, Dean Adam Jaffe, and, especially, Elaine Wong and Andrea Nix. In addition to their day-to-day support, my colleagues in the Fine Arts Department have twice granted me leave to work on this book among other pursuits. The university generously provided supplemental financial support during these leaves.

   Just as essential as money and time were the scholarly resources that facilitated my research. I wish to thank the staffs of the Biblioteca dell’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Biblioteca Hertziana, the Biblioteca Angelica, and the American Academy in Rome. In New York, my needs were always accommodated at the Avery, Butler, Watson, Institute of Fine Arts, and Frick Art Reference libraries. The Brandeis and Harvard University libraries proved indispensable during the final stages. The superlative Clark Art Institute Library and staff was a godsend at the very end.

   During the period of rewriting, some sections of the book were aired publicly. In 2000, I presented part of Chapter 3 at a conference at Yale titled “Baroque Bridges: Music, Poetry, and the Visual Arts in Seventeenth-Century Italy.” A much condensed version of Chapter 5 was delivered at the College Art Association Conference in Chicago in 2001. I am grateful to Mauro Calcagno, Jeffery Collins, and Ellen Rosand for these opportunities. Chapter 6 partly supplied my contributions to the 2004–5 Clark-Getty Workshop, “Art History and the Moving Image.” Apart from such formal colloquia, I am indebted to so many on a personal level for broadening and challenging my intellectual horizons while I have been at work on this book. To name a few: Hillary Ballon, Ben Binstock, Olivier Bonfait, Keith Christiansen, Frederick Ilchmann, Richard Lansing, Charles McClendon, Keith Moxey, Jennifer Stern, Geoffrey Turnovsky, and William Wallace. Michael Hall’s generosity and comic relief over the years have greatly facilitated my work. Throughout the revising process, Beatrice Rehl at Cambridge has been a paragon of patience and understanding. More recently, Eric Crahan, James Dunn, and Katie Greczylo have been extremely helpful and supportive. The book has also benefited markedly from the insightful comments of the anonymous readers.

   I have a special debt to acknowledge to Jinie Choi, whom I first met at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. When I told her the focus of my research, she responded playfully, “Poussin, he’s like a comic book painter” (a germane observation before the Boston Achilles on Skyros). Jinie could hardly have imagined then how much my obsession with word and image in Poussin would demand of our relationship. I am blessed to have her love and support.

   I dedicate this book to my parents, Alfred and Dr. Kathye Unglaub, in honor of their fortieth wedding anniversary. They have always instilled in me the value of learning and hard work, and they supported my education and my well-being in countless ways. For this, I will be forever grateful.

NOTE ON QUOTATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

Prose quotations are given in translation in the text, my own unless otherwise noted. The original appears only when of philological importance to the discussion. For poetry, I have included the original as well as my own translation. My aim has been to be as literal as possible, even if this makes the English rendering cumbersome at times. Given space constraints, I have only provided the original of prose quotations in a note if the source is a manuscript or not relatively accessible otherwise. Alternatively, quotations that appear only in the notes, to supplement ideas paraphrased in the text, remain in the original language.