Lesueur is a genius wholly French. Scarcely having escaped from the hands of Simon Vouët, he formed himself according to the model which he had in the soul. He never saw the sky of Italy. He knew some fragments of the antique, some pictures of Raphael, and the designs that Poussin sent him. With these feeble resources, and guided by a happy instinct, in less than ten years he mounted by a continual progress to the perfection of his talent, and expired at the moment when, finally sure of himself, he was about to produce new and more admirable master-pieces. Follow him from the St. Bruno completed in 1648, through the St. Paul of 1649, to the Vision of St. Benedict in 1651, and to the Muses, scarcely finished before his death. Lesueur went on adding to his essential qualities which he owed to his own genius, and to the national genius, I mean composition and expression, qualities which he had dreamed of, or had caught glimpses of. His design from day to day became more pure, without ever being that of the Florentine school, and the same is true of his coloring.
In Lesueur every thing is directed towards expression, every thing is in the service of the mind, every thing is idea and sentiment. There is no affectation, no mannerism; there is a perfect naïveté; his figures sometimes would seem even a little common, so natural are they, if a Divine breath did not animate them. It must not be forgotten that his favorite subjects do not exact a brilliant coloring: he oftenest retraces scenes mournful or austere. But as in Christianity by the side of suffering and resignation is faith with hope, so Lesueur joins to the pathetic sweetness and grace; and this man charms me at the same time that he moves me.
The works of Lesueur are almost always great wholes that demanded profound meditation, and the most flexible talent, in order to preserve in them unity of subject, and to give them variety and harmony. The History of St. Bruno, the founder of the order des Chartreux, is a vast melancholy poem, in which are represented the different scenes of monastic life. The History of St. Martin and St. Benedict has not come down to us entire; but the two fragments of it that we possess, the Mass of St. Martin, and the Vision of St. Benedict, allow us to compare that great work with every better thing of the kind that has been done in Italy, as, to speak sincerely, the Muses and the History of Love, appear to us to equal at least the Farnesina.
In the History of St. Bruno, it is particularly necessary to remark St. Bruno, prostrated before a crucifix, the saint reading a letter of the pope, his death, his apotheosis. Is it possible to carry meditation, humiliation, rapture farther? St. Paul preaching at Ephesus reminds one of the School of Athens, by the extent of the scene, the employment of architecture, and the skilful distribution of groups. In spite of the number of personages, and the diversity of episodes, the picture wholly centres in St. Paul. He preaches, and upon his words hang those who are listening, of every sex, of every age, in the most varied attitudes. In that we behold the grand lines of the Roman school, its design full of nobleness and truth at the same time. What charming and grave heads! What graceful, bold, and always natural movements! Here, that child with ringlets, full of naïve enthusiasm; there, that old man with bended knees, and hands joined. Are not all those beautiful heads, and those draperies, too, worthy of Raphael? But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. Paul,[136]—it is that of the Olympic Jupiter, animated by a new spirit. The Mass of St. Martin carries into the soul an impression of peace and silence. The Vision of St. Benedict has the character of simplicity full of grandeur. A desert, the saint on his knees, contemplating his sister, St. Scholastique, who is ascending to heaven, borne up by angels, accompanied by two young girls, crowned with flowers, and bearing the palm, the symbol of virginity. St. Peter and St. Paul show St. Benedict the abode whither his sister is going to enjoy eternal peace. A slight ray of the sun pierces the cloud. St. Benedict is as it were lifted up from the earth by this ecstatic vision. One scarcely desires a more lively color, and the expression is divine. Those two virgins, a little too tall, perhaps, how beautiful and pure they are! How sweet are those forms! How grave and gentle are those faces! The person of the holy monk, with all the material accessories, is perfectly natural, for it remains on the earth; whilst his face, where his soul shines forth, is wholly ideal, and already in heaven.
But the chef-d'œuvre of Lesueur is, in our opinion, the Descent from the Cross, or rather the enshrouding of Jesus Christ, already descended from the cross, whom Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and St. John are placing in the shroud. On the left, Magdalen, in tears, kisses the feet of Jesus; on the right, are the holy women and the Virgin. It is impossible to carry the pathetic farther and preserve beauty. The holy women, placed in front, have each their particular grief. While one of them abandons herself to despair, an immense but internal and thoughtful sadness is upon the face of the mother of the crucified. She has comprehended the divine benefit of the redemption of the human race, and her grief, sustained by this thought, is calm and resigned. And then what dignity in that head! It, in some sort, sums up the whole picture, and gives to it its character, that of a profound and subdued emotion. I have seen many Descents from the Cross; I have seen that of Rubens at Antwerp, in which the sanctity of the subject has, as it were, constrained the great Flemish painter to join sensibility and sentiment to color; none of those pictures have touched me like that of Lesueur. All the parts of art are there in the service of expression. The drawing is severe and strong; even the color, without being brilliant, surpasses that of the St. Bruno, the Mass of St. Martin, the St. Paul, and even that of the Vision of St. Benedict; as if Lesueur had wished to bring together in it all the powers of his soul, all the resources of his talent![137]
Now, regard the Muses,—other scenes, other beauties, the same genius. Those are Pagan pictures, but Christianity is in them also, by reason of the adorable chastity with which Lesueur has clothed them. All critics have emulously shown the mythological errors into which poor Lesueur fell, and they have not wanted occasion to deplore that he had not made the journey to Italy and studied antiquity more. But who can have the strange idea of searching in Lesueur for an archeology? I seek and find in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terpsichore, well or ill named, with a harp a little too strong, it is said, as if the Muse had no particular gift, in her modest attitude the symbol of becoming grace? In that group of three Muses, to which one may give what name he pleases, is not the one that holds upon her knees a book of music, who sings or is about to sing, the most ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia that preludes just before abandoning herself to the intoxication of inspiration? And in those pictures there is brilliancy and coloring; the landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had guided the hand of his friend.
Poussin! What a name I pronounce. If Lesueur is the painter of sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. He is in some sort the philosopher of painting. His pictures are religious or moral lectures that testify a great mind as well as a great heart. It is sufficient to recall the Seven Sacraments, the Deluge, the Arcadia, the Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy, the Will of Eudamidas, and the Dance of Human Life. And the style is equal to the conception. Poussin draws like a Florentine, composes like a Frenchman, and often equals Lesueur in expression; coloring alone is sometimes wanting to him. As well as Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, and imitates it; but, like Racine, he always remains original. In place of the naïveté and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a severe simplicity, with a correctness that never abandons him. Remember, too, that he cultivated every kind of painting. He is at once a great historical painter and a great landscape painter,—he treats religious subjects as well as profane subjects, and by turns is inspired by antiquity and the Bible. He lived much at Rome, it is true, and died there; but he also worked in France, and almost always for France. Scarcely had he become known, when Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him there, loading him with honors, and giving him the commission of first painter in ordinary to the king, with the general direction of all the works of painting, and all the ornaments of the royal houses. During that sojourn of two years in Paris, he made the Last Supper (Cène), the St. François Xavier, the Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy. It was also to France, to his friend M. de Chantelou, that from Rome he addressed the Inspiration of St. Paul, as well as the second series of the Seven Sacraments, an immense composition that, for grandeur of thought, can vie with the Stanze of Raphael. I speak of it from the engravings; for the Seven Sacraments are no longer in France. Eternal shame of the eighteenth century! It was at least necessary to wrest from the Greeks the pediments of the Parthenon,—we, we delivered up to strangers, we sold all those monuments of French genius which Richelieu and Mazarin, with religious care, had collected. Public indignation did not avert the act! And there has not since been found in France a king, a statesman, to interdict letting the master-pieces of art that honor the nation depart without authorization from the national territory![138] There has not been found a government which has undertaken at least to repurchase those that we have lost, to get back again the great works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered in Europe, instead of squandering millions to acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish canvasses, in truth of an admirable color, but without nobleness and moral expression.[139] I know and I love the Dutch pastorals and the cows of Potter; I am not insensible to the sombre and ardent coloring of Zurbaran, to the brilliant Italian imitations of Murillo and Velasquez; but in fine, what is all that in comparison with serious and powerful compositions like the Seven Sacraments, for example, that profound representation of Christian rites, a work of the highest faculties of the intellect and the soul, in which the intellect and the soul will ever find an exhaustless subject of study and meditation! Thank God, the graver of Pesne has saved them from our ingratitude and barbarity. Whilst the originals decorate the gallery of a great English lord,[140] the love and the talent of a Pesne, of a Stella, have preserved for us faithful copies in those expressive engravings that one never grows tired of contemplating, that every time we examine them, reveal to us some new side of the genius of our great countryman. Regard especially the Extreme Unction! What a sublime and at the same time almost graceful scene! One would call it an antique bas-relief, so many groups are properly distributed in it, with natural and varied attitudes. The draperies are as admirable as those of a fragment of the Panathenæa, which is in the Louvre. The figures are all beautiful. Beauty of figures belongs to sculpture, one is about to say:—yes, but it also belongs to painting, if you have yourself the eye of the painter, if you have been struck with the expression of those postures, those heads, those gestures, and almost those looks; for every thing lives, every thing breathes, even in those engravings, and if it were the place, we would endeavor to make the reader penetrate with us into those secrets of Christian sentiment which are also the secrets of art.
We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the Seven Sacraments, and for not having known how to keep from England and Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign collections,[141] by going to see at the Louvre what remains to us of the great French artist,—thirty pictures produced at different epochs of his life, which, for the most part, worthily sustain his renown,—the portrait of Poussin, one of the Bacchanals made for Richelieu, Mars and Venus, the Death of Adonis, the Rape of the Sabines,[142] Eliezer and Rebecca, Moses saved from the Waters, the Infant Jesus on the Knees of the Virgin and St. Joseph standing by,[143] especially the Manna in the Desert, the Judgment of Solomon, the Blind Men of Jericho, the Woman taken in Adultery, the Inspiration of St. Paul, the Diogenes, the Deluge, the Arcadia. Time has turned the color, which was never very brilliant; but it has not been able to disturb what will make them live forever,—the design, the composition, and the expression. The Deluge has remained, and in fact will always be, the most striking. After so many masters who have treated the same subject, Poussin has found the secret of being original, and more pathetic than his predecessors, in representing the solemn moment when the race is about to disappear. There are few details; some dead bodies are floating upon the abyss; a sinister-looking moon has scarcely risen; a few moments and mankind will be no more; the last mother uselessly extends her last child to the last father, who cannot take it, and the serpent that has destroyed mankind darts forth triumphant. We try in vain to find in the Deluge some signs of a trembling hand: the soul that sustained and conducted that hand makes itself felt by our soul, and profoundly moves it. Stop at that scene of mourning, and almost by its side let your eyes rest upon that fresh landscape and upon those shepherds that surround a tomb. The most aged, with a knee on the ground, reads these words graven upon the stone: Et in Arcadia ego, and I also lived in Arcadia. At the left a shepherd listens with serious attention. At the right is a charming group, composed of a shepherd in the spring-time of life, and a young girl of ravishing beauty. An artless admiration is painted on the face of the young peasant, who looks with happiness on his beautiful companion. As for her, her adorable face is not even veiled with the slightest shade; she smiles, her hand resting carelessly upon the shoulder of the young man, and she has no appearance of comprehending that lecture given to beauty, youth, and love. I confess that, for this picture alone, of so touching a philosophy, I would give many master-pieces of coloring, all the pastorals of Potter, all the badinages of Ostade, all the buffooneries of Teniers.
Lesueur and Poussin, by very different but nearly equal titles, are at the head of our great painting of the seventeenth century. After them, what artists again are Claude Lorrain and Philippe de Champagne?