Self-Portrait

A native of Les Andelys in Normandy, Poussin lived almost exclusively in Rome after 1624. Only once, in the years 1640 to 1642, did he travel one last time, albeit unhappily, to his French homeland – to Paris. In the Eternal city, in contrast, he was accorded great recognition. At the recommendation of the poet Giovanni Battista Marino, Poussin was patronized beginning in 1626 by the art loving Cardinal Francesco Barberini. Beginning in 1632, Poussin maintained a studio on the Via Paolina. The artist depicts himself with a crayon holder and a sketchbook, elements that emphasise his predilection for rigorous figure drawing. In this regard, Poussin felt an strong affinity for the highest artistic performances of antiquity and the Italian High Renaissance. In this portrait, Poussin favours muted local colours. In the absence of pronounced pictorial depth, the portrait is backed by a painted trompe-l’oeil relief. It shows putti with a laurel festoon, and is interpretable, conceivably, as an allegorical depiction of the children of Night, Death (Thanatos), and Sleep (Hypnos). The composition, characterised by a subtle melancholy, is reminiscent of an epitaph. Here, works by the Flemish sculptor François Duquesnoy, a friend of the artist, seem to have served as a stimulus. But Poussin seems to have been impressed as well by Roman Imperial era sarcophagi reliefs. A brief biographical inscription informs us among other things of the fact that he has served as a senator of the art academy of his elected home of Rome since 1633, and has been a court painter of the Bourbon royal house since 1639. It was added by a foreign hand shortly before the painting was documented by an engraving, at the latest in 1660. The engraving informs us that the Berlin picture was later cut down along its upper edge by a few centimetres. The inscription on the spine of the book, which reads “DE LVMINE ET COLORE”, was also added subsequently, between 1649 and 1660, presumably outside of Poussin’s studio. For this reason, it was masked (reversibly) when the painting was restored in 1993. Although the classicist Nicolas Poussin regarded portrait painting with extreme detachment (the origin of this attitude may perhaps be sought in the biological and motoric mutability of the human face), he nonetheless complied with the desire of his Parisian friend Paul Fréart de Chantelou for a self-portrait. Poussin was however dissatisfied with the first (Berlin) version. In June of 1649, he promised his client a new portrait. The second version was completed in 1650, and is found today in the Louvre. Evidently, however, he had meanwhile reworked the first version, so that he was able to surrender it without reservations to the Parisian banker and silk manufacturer Jean Pointel, as we read in a letter addressed to Chantelou and dated 29 May 1650. The self-portrait, produced in Rome, was purchased in 1821 by the Prussian King Frederick William III for the planned Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Rainer Michaelis | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019