Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 104. (Budapest, 2006)
ANDREA GZÉRE: Nicolas Poussin's Allegory in the Collection of Drawings in Budapest
drawing, we see figures suggesting virtue and glory, in contradiction with the left-hand side, representing the earthly pleasures. In the foreground, a hero holding a thick staff reminiscent of the attribute of Hercules, regards the laurel wreath held above him, which two figures in Roman dress —on the left a young soldier, on the right an older bearded man in senatorial attire —prepare to place on his head. To their left and a bit behind, above a reclining Venus (?), 13 representing sensual love, the victorious Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, holds a lance. The prophet-like man leaning over the stones, positioned almost in the centre, his back turned to the reclining Venus, is the real protagonist of this composition, his gesture being the key to the message of the drawing: he indicates with his right hand the ruins —tombstones (?). Due to this gesture, the sheet can be interpretad as an allegory of the transitory nature of every worldly thing —sins, pleasures, glories and virtues alike. Poussin examined the ephemeral nature of life, the subject of the constant omnipresence of death, twice in his paintings. The earlier picture — Et in Arcadia ego (Even in Arcadia there am I), i.e., The Arcadian Shepherds —is from 1628-1629, and portrays shepherds, who browse the above epitaph. 14 This type of depiction taking classical and Renaissance poetry as its point of departure, then following the picture of Guercino (1591-1666), 15 and last but not least, the works of Poussin, soon became popular in painting 16 —let us just think, for instance, of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's (1609-1664) work of similar theme 17 —and already in the eighteenth century was considered practically a commonplace. Posterity found Poussin's later painting of the same theme, but in a more mature classic composition, 18 so typically the quintessence of his art, that this, translated into a relief, was used to decorate the artist's grave, which the French ambassador, François-René de Chateaubriand, commissioned Léon Vaudoyer, Paul Lemoyne and Louis Desprez to produce from marble in 1828-1832 in the San Lorenzo in Lucina church in Rome. 19 Poussin's high level of classical literary erudition, and identification with stoic philosophy shines out from his correspondence. W^e might interpret his thinking in connection with death, lines written in one of his letters, as almost the motto of our drawing: "Nothing is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than its moment." 20 This is why we cannot forget it even in the happiest or most glorious moments of our lives. While only the well-known ancient literary thematic appears within the sphere of the Marino drawings, in parallel with the picture margin, with figures aligned and modelled on ancient reliefs, Poussin's original ideas, his own particular subjects, which often stand unprecedented in the history of painting —like the Death of Germanicus, n or the Realm of Flora (fig. 3) 22 — already take on form starting in 1628-1629. Our drawing is linked w r ith the latter, not only in terms of the peculiarity of the subject matter, but also due to similar traits in the structure of
