Caravaggio and Poussin Michelangelo Da

Caravaggio and Poussin Michelangelo da Caravaggio and Nicolas Poussin were not contemporaries but have been linked in art history because of the criticisms Poussin made of Caravaggio and because of the differences in approach seen in their aesthetic ideas and the works they produced following those ideas. One part of the reputation of Caravaggio shows him to have been a difficult and even despised human being.

Many art lovers might agree with Stendahl, who saw Caravaggio as a great painter but a "wicked man." Poussin, on the other hand, saw nothing positive in Caravaggio as an artist and held that Caravaggio "had come into the world to destroy painting." Jonathan Unglaub states that "No two artists have seemed as diametrically opposed in their expression of the representational purpose of painting as Michelangelo da Caravaggio and Nicolas Poussin," noting that each artist saw painting as a reflection, though they understood this idea in radically different terms.

Unglaub cites Caravaggio's Medusa as an example, noting that it shows painting as mirror: "Executed on canvas mounted on a wooden parade shield, it assumes the convex form of Perseus's polished shield. Its surface reflects the gruesome face of the decapitated Gorgon frozen in an instant of petrifying horror.

Medusa's androgynous visage captures the artist's own expression studied in the mirror, slightly veiled through the mythological guise, and this is why it captivates us with such unmitigated force and immediacy." Caravaggio is known to have boasted that nature alone was his master, and for this reason, Unglaub states, "Whatever the dramatic roles assigned to his figures, they retain the palpable presence of the model or, in some cases, the artist himself, as if reflections on a mirror." M.

Alpatov notes certain problems seen in Poussin's early works, citing two distinct principles of pictorial composition occurring in combination. The first of these concerns the representation of objects, and the second the representation of sections of space in which objects have a subordinate role. Alpatov says this shows two opposing outlooks and also helps characterize every painting in terms of the same factor, "the relation between the representation and the frame." Alpatov finds this tension in the "Echo and Narcissus" housed in the Louvre.

Caravaggio painted a similar subject in his "Narcissus," though with different aesthetic principles. Poussin expressed his aesthetic approach as he stated that he wanted "nobility of thought and action, avoidance of sordidness, perfection without laboriousness, and the development of style that is true to nature and to self.

The development of style is held to be a gift of nature and genius." Caravaggio was dead by the time he was 40 and yet had an influence that would last long after his time, for he "had forged a style which both flattered the sensibilities of the early Baroque and sent resonances through Western art which have lost none of their potency in the intervening centuries." Keates sees Poussin's judgment on Caravaggio to have been influenced by the latter's boorish behavior more than his aesthetic, and in some respects the two artists each celebrate turning to life for inspiration and seeking their subjects in nature.

David Carrier suspects that Poussin may be held in higher esteem by some modern critics simply because they know more about him, and Carrier writes, His art is an iconographer's paradise, and much of the literature is devoted to debates about the exact significance of paintings such as the Arcadian Shepherds. Rubens was more erudite; other 17th-century painters and printers created obscurer images.

But although only a minority of Poussin's paintings pose obvious puzzles, there is a long-standing tendency for most of his champions to treat his art as highly esoteric. Some other Old Masters - Piero della Francesca or Caravaggio, for example - have been analyzed recently in almost equally complex ways. But such accounts cannot appeal to biographical information, for relatively little is known about the lives of these artists.

With Poussin, by contrast, we have a great deal of biographical evidence from his letters and from art writers who knew him - evidence that present-day art historians who analyze his paintings in highly esoteric ways inevitably must override. Another subject addressed by both, and by a number of Renaissance artists, is that of Bacchus. Titian produced a painting of the subject of "Bacchus and Ariadne," which shows Ariadne surprised by Bacchus and his train. In the sky is a constellation symbolizing Ariadne's apotheosis.

Bacchus and his revelers rush into the frame as Ariadne is turning away. Bacchus has grape leaves in his hair, as he does in the Michelangelo statue. This symbol will also be seen in other paintings, such as the paintings of Bacchus by Caravaggio and Pietro da Cortona. These latter two works are very different renditions of their subject, though there are similarities in the symbols used. Both figures have leaves twining around their heads.

The da Cortona work shows a much younger Bacchus, a child, with bunches of grapes in hand. The Caravaggio presents an adult Bacchus drunk from the wine in the goblet he holds in his left hand, and grapes and other fruit are visible in a bowl in the foreground. The Bacchus of Caravaggio is a dissipated adult, and Caravaggio renders this scene with considerable realism. The expression on the face shows how drunk this Bacchus is and how less than ideal this makes him.

Poussin's later work known as "The Birth of Bacchus" shows a very different approach, depicting two subjects rather than one. The left side of the canvas shows an event in the infancy of Bacchus, though not his birth as the title would indicate.

The infant is being handed over by Mercury to one of the assembled nymphs as Jove looks over the scene and Pan "celebrates young Bacchus' advent on earth with a tune on his shepherd's flute." The right side of the picture shows a completely different and unrelated scene in which the dead body of a beautiful youth is shown on the bank of the same pool where the nymphs play, and he is surrounded by white flowers showing him to be Narcissus, with the grief-stricken Echo right behind him.

The idea of reflection for Poussin is applied in an abstract philosophical sense, as a meditation on the illustrated subject, its larger theme, and his own art. Unglaub states that even when Poussin undertook a self-portrait, "which demands verism and records the encounter of the artist and his reflection in a mirror, Poussin undermines the illusion of specular presence. The rigid and formal image of the artist is a construction in which the representation of the concept of painting takes precedence over mirroring an individual resemblance.

The painter's effigy forms the figural counterpart to the inscribed epitaph and the cast shadow, both of which preclude any misreading of the surface as that of a mirror." Various critics have shown that Poussin constructed the portrait as a rhetorical argument imparting to the viewer his interpretation of the ideal of painting. Caravaggio is less given to examining art itself and more to mirroring what he sees in nature. Unglaub also notes that many observers have reinforced the Caravaggio / Poussin dialectic.

Unglaub then cites one work by Poussin that "contains a reflection that rivals the illusionistic presence of Caravaggio's mirroring shield and even takes shape on polished armor. Unlike Caravaggio's face, which evokes an immediate frisson of recognition, Poussin's reflection is camouflaged and emerges only from close looking. Once detected, the most literal and painterly of reflections signals a deeply pensive analysis of art, life, and the depicted literary episode." This work is "Tancred and Erminia" in the State Heritage Museum in St.

Petersburg, often praised as Poussin's most "reflective" work in every sense of the term, with its physical mirroring, poetic exegesis, and self-searching. Both Caravaggio and Poussin often use the reflective surface as an element, and Poussin makes use of this subject to enhance the aesthetic brilliance of his paintings. Poussin often "included a placid aquatic surface that mirrors the surrounding figures, trees, hills, and clouds.

In some instances, the physical reflections correspond with thematic or metaphoric mirroring among paired paintings." Certainly this would apply to his "The Birth of Bacchus" and to the insert of Narcissus and Echo. The artist uses these reflections to suggest his own role in reflecting reality and also as expressions of what he sees in nature. In the story of Narcissus, of course, this underlying philosophical and aesthetic element fits with the details of the narrative on which the painting is based.

Poussin is simply more conscious about the iconography he uses and about the way he suggests that act of painting in the work at the same time. He sees Caravaggio as dedicated to destroying painting, while he might see himself as celebrating and even explaining it. Caravaggio's Bacchus is more clearly defined in terms of subject and is simpler in execution, while Poussin's Bacchus shows a scene from the life of Bacchus while linking that scene to one from the story of Narcissus.

Such linkages and juxtapositions contributes to the search for hidden meanings, and concentration on Poussin's iconography shows that critics believe there is usually more meaning in the frame than a cursory look would convey.

To a degree, this belies Poussin's emphasis on simply reflecting nature, for the hand of the artist is always evident in the way the frame is formed consciously around various symbols and icons as well as on the basis of contrasting stories as is done in "The Birth of Bachus." Caravaggio actually tends to reflect nature more directly and with less of.