The Four Seasons (Poussin)
The iconography evokes not only the Christian themes of death and resurrection but also the pagan imagery of classical antiquity: the poetic worlds of Milton's Paradise Lost and Virgil's Georgics.
By his absolute humility, by his effacement of himself, by his refusal to use any tricks or overstate himself, Poussin has succeeded in identifying himself with nature, conceived as a manifestation of the divine reason.
The Seasons are among the supreme examples of pantheistic landscape painting.Jamais peut-être, dans toute la peinture occidentale, des choses aussi nombreuses et parfois si difficiles n'avaient été dites avec une telle simplicité.
Mais cette identification n'est ni « une projection » ni une confidence : là est le sens de cette impersonalité que l'on a pu reprocher à Poussin, et qui fait sa grandeur.chargé d'années, paralytique, plein d'infirmités de toutes sortes, étranger et sans amis ... Voilà l'état où je me trouve ... J'ai si grande difficulté d'écrire pour le grand tremblement de ma main ...
Work on the paintings was necessarily slow, because of general ill health and the continuing tremor in his hands, which had affected Poussin since 1640 and turned him into a recluse.
The Seasons are a continuation of Poussin's mythological landscapes, depicting the power and grandeur of nature, "benign in Spring, rich in Summer, somber yet fruitful in Autumn, and cruel in Winter.
"[4] The series also represents successive times of the day: early morning for Spring, midday for Summer, the evening for Autumn, and a moonlit night for Winter.
The whole sequence could also represent Man's path to redemption: his state of innocence before the original sin and the Fall in Spring; the union that gave rise to the birth of Christ through the House of David in Summer; the Mosaic laws in Autumn; and finally the Last Judgement in Winter.
No attempt is made to dazzle the viewer with technique and Poussin seems to have taken great pains to leave behind all trace of the artist and let the grandeur of Nature speak for itself.
Equally small, the robed figure of the Creator can be seen high up on a cloud surrounded by a halo of light; He has pointed away from the viewer, departing as if aware of what is to come.
[9] The bucolic scene is completed by figures of a peasant playing on bagpipes to the right and, on the left, a reaper quenching his thirst from a flask of wine while women prepare bread in the shade of the large tree in the foreground.
The rougher texture and trembling brushwork evident in Autumn or The Spies with the Grapes of the Promised Land suggest that this might have been the last painting of the set to be completed.
Long shadows are cast by the evening sun, whose fading light catches a town nestling under a mountain in the distance and buildings perched on a rocky ledge to the right.
Contrasting with the jagged shapes of rocks and trees, the waterfall produces a horizontal backdrop for the frieze of stranded survivors in the foreground, uncertain of their impending doom.
Additionally, the presence of a snake plays a special iconographic role in the cycle, because it also serves as a reminder of the singular absence of a serpent in the Garden of Eden.
[6][13] He applies nature to his own purposes, works out her images according to standards of his own thought ... and the first conception being given, all the rest seems to grow out of, and be assimilated to it, by the unfailing process of a studious imagination.
In landscape painting, in which the elements are mostly horizontal, he introduced classical architecture to make the Pythagorean right angles so essential to his methods, much studied later by commentators and artists alike.
[20] Very soon after it was first exhibited, the Académie Royale exceptionally devoted a short conférence to it in 1668, with an unprecedented five subsequent discussions between 1694 and 1736, indicating the unique impression it had made in France.
While recognizing the harmony of the picture and its economical monochromatism, the academicians nevertheless felt that the inherent greyness of the subject matter did not give scope for Objets agréables.
It was widely distributed as an engraving and numerous artists made copies of the original, including Peyron, Géricault, Etty, Danby and Degas.
As Verdi (1981) has wryly commented, it is the only painting by Poussin which "would retain much of its attraction for the lover of modern art even if it were inadvertently hung upside down".
