A person of rank who dabbled in painting for his amusement, having one day shown Poussin one of his performances, and asked his opinion of its merits, the latter replied, "You only want a little poverty, sir, to make a good painter."
POUSSIN AND MENGS.
The admirers of Mengs, jealous of Poussin's title of "the Painter of Philosophers," conferred on him the antithetical one of "the Philosopher of Painters." Though it cannot be denied that Mengs' writings and his pictures are learned, yet few artists have encountered such a storm of criticism.
POUSSIN AND DOMENICHINO.
Next to correctness of drawing and dignity of conception, Poussin valued expression in painting. He ranked Domenichino next to Raffaelle for this quality, and not long after his arrival at Rome, he set about copying the Flagellation of St. Andrew, painted by that master in the church of S. Gregorio, in competition with Guido, whose Martyrdom of that Saint is on the opposite side of the same church. Poussin found all the students in Rome busily copying the Guido, which, though a most beautiful work, lacks the energy and expression which distinguish the Flagellation; but he was too sure of his object to be led away by the crowd. According to Felibien, Domenichino, who then resided at Rome, in a very delicate state of health, having heard that a young Frenchman was making a careful study of his picture, caused himself to be conveyed in his chair to the church, where he conversed some time with Poussin, without making himself known; charmed with his talents and highly cultivated mind, he invited him to his house, and from that time Poussin enjoyed his friendship and profited by his advice, till that illustrious painter went to Naples, to paint the chapel of St. Januarius.
POUSSIN AND SALVATOR ROSA.
Among the strolling parties of monks and friars, cardinals and prelates, Roman princesses and English peers, Spanish grandees and French cavaliers which crowded the Pincio, towards the latter end of the seventeenth century, there appeared two groups, which may have recalled those of the Portico or the Academy, and which never failed to interest and fix the attention of the beholders. The leader of one of these singular parties was the venerable Niccolo Poussin! The air of antiquity which breathed over all his works seemed to have infected even his person and his features; and his cold, sedate, and passionless countenance, his measured pace and sober deportment, spoke that phlegmatic temperament and regulated feeling, which had led him to study monuments rather than men, and to declare that the result of all his experience was "to teach him to live well with all persons." Soberly clad, and sagely accompanied by some learned antiquary or pious churchman, and by a few of his deferential disciples, he gave out his trite axioms in measured phrase and emphatic accent, lectured rather than conversed, and appeared like one of the peripatetic teachers of the last days of Athenian pedantry and pretension.