The purpose of this study is to clarify the narrative effects and thematic meaning produced in a combination of figures and landscape in Nicolas Poussin’s landscape paintings, based on the major critics’ theories of the day, from Roger de Piles. I...
The purpose of this study is to clarify the narrative effects and thematic meaning produced in a combination of figures and landscape in Nicolas Poussin’s landscape paintings, based on the major critics’ theories of the day, from Roger de Piles. In cultural circumstances where the landscape was relatively considered as a subordinate genre, the theory of de Piles has received great attention because he tried to emphasize the narrative aspects perceived as an exclusive property of istoria by distinguishing the landscape into two main sorts: “style Champetre” and “style Heroique”. In his landscapes dating from around 1650, Poussin as a representative painter of the latter made up a ‘fictional’ story through a serial combination of motifs, unlike the historical painting for which he was used to postulate a subject in advance. Especially in his Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe(1651), a mythological archetype functions as motive solving a narrative clue. It plays, furthermore, a crucial role in moving spectators’ emotions and in bringing out their passions in relationships with natural phenomenon. To sum up, Poussin tried to embody a contemplative landscape in company with a pleasure for the soul, by composing an elaborate narrative structure where tension and release are repeated.