French Baroque Era Painter, 1594-1665 French painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. His supreme achievement as a painter lies in his unrivalled but hard-won capacity to subordinate dramatic narrative and the expression of extreme states of human passions to the formal harmony of designs based on the beauty and precision of abstract forms. The development of his art towards this end was focused on the search for a point of equilibrium and synthesis between the forces of the Classical and the Baroque around which most critical debate in Rome was concentrated during the 1630s. Poussin did not aspire to the classicism of Raphael's idealized human forms or Michelangelo's re-embodiment of the physical splendours of the antique world, nor did he attempt to vie with the bravura and energy of Annibale Carracci's treatment of Classical mythology in the Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Equally he was not concerned with the illusionistic effects and heightened emotionalism of Baroque artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. He was concerned above all with interpreting his subject-matter, whether Classical or religious, and telling a story with the greatest possible concentration of emotional response,  Related Paintings of POUSSIN, Nicolas :. | The Nurture of Bacchus (detail) af | Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake af | The Nurture of Bacchus | The Rape of the Sabine Women af | The Death of Germanicus af |
Related Artists:
Jacques Courtois
(also called 'il Borgognone' or Giacomo Borgognone) (1621 - 20 May 1676?) was a French painter. He was born at Saint-Hippolyte, near Besançon. His father was a painter, and with him Jacques remained studying up to the age of fifteen. Towards 1637 he went to Italy, was received at Milan by a Burgundian gentleman, and entered, and for three years remained in the French military service. The sight of some battle-pictures revived his taste for fine art. He went to Bologna, and studied under the friendly tutelage of Guido Reni; thence he proceeded to Rome, where he painted, in the Cistercian monastery, the "Miracle of the Loaves." Here he took a house and after a while entered upon his own characteristic style of art, that of battle-painting, in which he has been accounted to excel all other old masters; his merits were cordially recognized by the celebrated Cerquozzi, named Michelangelo delle Battaglie. He soon rose from penury to ease, and married a painter's daughter, Maria Vagini; she died after seven years of wedded life. Prince Matthias of Tuscany employed Courtois on some striking works in his villa, Lappeggio, representing with much historical accuracy the princes military exploits. In Venice also the artist executed for the senator Sagredo some remarkable battle-pieces. In Florence he entered the Society of Jesus, taking the habit in Rome in 1655; it was calumniously rumoured that he adopted this course in order to escape punishment for having poisoned his wife. As a Jesuit Brother, Courtois painted many works in churches and monasteries of the society. He lived piously in Rome, and died there of apoplexy on 20 May 1676 (some accounts say 1670 or 1671). His battle-pieces have movement and fire, warm colouring (now too often blackened), and great command of the brush, those of moderate dimensions are the more esteemed. They are slight in execution, and tell out best from a distance. Courtois etched, with skill twelve battle-subjects of his own composition. The Danzig painter called Pandolfo Reschi in Italy was his pupil. His brother Guillaume was also a painter in Italy.
Mario Dei Fiori
Italian painter , Penna Fermana 1603- Rome 1673 Italian painter. He was the first and most famous Roman painter to specialize in flower-pieces and one of only four still-life artists included by Leone Pascoli in his collection of artists' biographies. The early sources and old inventories attribute many flower paintings in distinguished Roman collections to the Caravaggesque painter Tommaso Salini, and since the 18th century Mario's name has been linked with his, and it has been assumed that he trained with Salini. This apprenticeship is difficult to document, yet a comparison of Mario's pictures with inventory descriptions of works by Salini confirms that Mario was influenced by his art. To the minute observation of various kinds of flowers, Mario added a refined sense of design and an interest in effects of light, still linked to Caravaggio in the use of a dark background.
Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin
French Painter, 1724-1780,Draughtsman, etcher and painter, brother of (1) Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin. He studied with the painters Etienne Jeaurat and Hyacinthe Colin de Vermont, but failed three times to win the Prix de Rome (competition paintings, 1752-4; Paris, Louvre). He broke with the Academie Royale, preferring to support and exhibit at the Academie de St Luc. Although he continued to paint such pictures as a Street Show in Paris (c. 1760; London, N.G.; other examples in Rouen, Mus. B.-A.), he is best known as a draughtsman and etcher. He was a passionate and unconventional observer of the sights of the Paris streets and of the social scene. Dacier saw him as the 'man who drew at all times and in all places', and his contemporary Jean-Baptiste Greuze spoke of his 'priapism of draughtsmanship'. In his many drawings he combined pencil, black and red chalk, bistre, ink and watercolour to create dazzling spontaneous effects. He drew incidents that struck him as he wandered the streets, or entertainments that he attended. He recorded them, noting dates and times, in sketchbooks (e.g. Paris, Louvre and Stockholm, Nmus.) or sometimes in the margins and blank pages of printed books that he was carrying (such as a volume of the poems of Jean-Michel Sedaine, in the Mus. Cond?, Chantilly). These drawings of contemporary incidents include the Fire at the Foire Saint-Germain on the Night of 16-17 May 1762 (ex-David Weill priv. col.) and the Crowning of Voltaire at the Theetre-Franeais in 1778 (Paris, Louvre; see fig.). He went regularly to the Salon of the Academie Royale and to art sales, covering the margins and flyleaves of his sale catalogues and Salon livrets with tiny sketches of works of art and the passing scene. One hundred of these illustrated catalogues were among his effects when he died, and of these about a third survive. These include the livrets for the Salons of 1761, 1769 and 1777 (all Paris, Bib. N.), as well as the catalogues of the sales of Louis-Michel van Loo in 1772 and Charles Natoire in 1778 (both Paris, Bib. N.), and that of Pierre-Jean Mariette in 1775 (Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). Together with his etchings and large watercolours (e.g. Paris, Louvre) of the Louvre's Salon Carre at the time of the exhibitions of 1753, 1767 and 1769,