Sublime Poussin 9781503617865

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SUB LIME POUSS IN

MERIDIAN

Crossing Aesthetics

Werner Hamacher & David E. Wellbery

Editors

Translated by Catherine Porter

Stanford University Press

Stanford California I999

SUBLIME POUSSIN

Louis Marin

Sublime Poussin was originally published in French in 1995 by Editions du Seuil under the title

Sublime Poussin © 1995 Editions du Seuil

Assistance for the translation was provided by the French Ministry of Culture Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1999 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Printed in the United States of America CIP

data appear at the end of the book

Contents

List ofIllustrations and Tables Introduction

IX

I

PART 1: "READ THE STORY AND THE PICTURE"

§I §2 §3

§4

Reading a Picture from 1639 according to a Letter by Poussin

5

Description of the Image: Concerning a Landscape by Poussin

29

Description of a Painting and the Sublime in Painting: Concerning a Poussin Landscape and Its Subject

66

Panofsky and Poussin in Arcadia

§ 5 The Classical Sublime: "Tempests" in Some Landscapes by Poussin

104 120

PART II: "GREAT THEORY AND PRACTICE ALLIED"

§6

Fragments of a Walk through Poussin's Ruins

§7

Awakening Metamorphoses: Poussin,

1625-1635

I43 152

Contents

Vllt

§8 §9

A Gaze Rewarded, or Moses Saved from the Water

171

Variations on an Absent Portrait: Poussin's Self-Portraits, 1649-1650

183

§w The Sublime in the 167os: Something

Indefinable, a "Je Ne Sais Quoi"?

209

Appendix 1: 'Sublime Poussin' (Louis Marin's summary outline, 1988)

225

Appendix 2: Letter to Chantelou, ..'8 April 1639

228

An,,·ndix 3: Letter to Chantelou, 24 November 1647

230

Noi