Many years afterwards, Poussin, in speaking of this period, said to Chantilon: 'I have sometimes gone to bed without having tasted food since the morning, not because I had no means of paying at a hostel—although that also has befallen me at times—but because, after having my soul filled with the glorious beauty of ancient art, I could not endure to mingle in the low, sordid scenes of a cheap eating-house. Indeed, it was scarcely a sacrifice to do so, for my heart was too full to allow me to feel hunger.'
Poussin studied nature with a minuteness that often exposed him to raillery. Whenever he made a country excursion, he brought back a bag filled with pebbles and mosses, whose various tints and forms he afterwards studied with the most scrupulous care. Vigneul de Marville asked him one day how he had reached so high a rank among the great painters. 'I tried to neglect nothing,' replied Poussin.
True, indeed, he had neglected nothing. He gave his days and nights to the acquirement of various sciences. He understood anatomy better than any surgeon of his time; he knew history like a Benedictine, and the antiquities of Rome as a botanist does his favourite flora. But architecture was the art which he esteemed most essential to a painter; and accordingly his landscapes abound in exquisite delineations of buildings.
His veneration for the works of his predecessors was very great. We find him, in a letter addressed to M. de Chantilon, requesting that a painting which he sent might not be placed in the same room with one of Raphael's—'lest the contrast might ruin mine, and cause whatever little beauty it has to vanish.'
He was an ardent admirer of Domenichino, and copied many of his works. It happened one day, that as he was in a chapel busily employed in copying a painting by that master, he saw a feeble old man tottering slowly towards him, leaning on a crutch. The visitor, without ceremony, seated himself on the painter's stool, and began deliberately to examine his work. Poussin greatly disliked inquisitive critics, and now feeling annoyed, he began to put up his pallet, and to prepare for leaving.
'You don't like visitors, young man?' said the old man smiling. 'Neither did I. But when I was your age, and, like you, copying the works of the old masters, if one of them had come to look over my shoulder, and see how I succeeded in reproducing the form which he had created, I would not for that have put away my pallet, but I would gladly have sought his counsel.' And while he spoke, the handle of his crutch was rubbing against the centre of the picture.
'Signor, are you mad?' exclaimed Poussin, seizing the offending crutch.
'So they say, my child; but 'tis not true. No, no; Domenichino is not mad, and can still give good advice.'
'Domenichino! what! the great Domenichino?' cried the young man.
'The poor Domenichino. Yes, you see him such as years and grief have made him. He has come, young man, to counsel you not to follow in his track, if you wish to gain fortune and renown. That,' he continued, pointing to his own painting,'is true and conscientious art. Well, it leads to the alms-house. I see that you have the power to become a great artist. Change your place; be extravagant, capricious, unnatural, and then you will succeed.'