000 01771cam a2200205 4500500
005 20250121134203.0
041 _afre
042 _adc
100 1 0 _aTouboul, Patricia
_eauthor
245 0 0 _aGods, loves and snakes in Nicolas Poussin’s paintings: Hélène Bouchilloux’s other 17th century
260 _c2020.
500 _a93
520 _aLandscape with a man killed by a snake, painted by Poussin in 1648, gave rise to numerous different readings since those proposed by Felibien, Fénelon or Diderot; those readings suggest either a poetical source or an engraving from which it is held to draw its inspiration in order to account for the identity either of the dead character or the snake’s; but none of them seems to settle the question. This paper analyses the interpretation put forward by Hélène Bouchilloux, who proposes to identify the dead character as Narcissus and the snake as Python. Poussin is supposed to have staged, through the death of Narcissus, the “downfall” of a barren love, together with that of the false definition of the art of painting embodied in Caravaggio’s work. This hypothesis, albeit tempting, is nevertheless fraught with methodological difficulties, both with respect to the way Ovid’s text is to be read, and the comparative approach to several of Poussin’s paintings it draws on, so that it might fall prey to overinterpretation.
690 _aoverinterpretation
690 _aNicolas Poussin
690 _aenigmatic painting
690 _athe idea of painting
786 0 _nRevue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger | Volume 145 | 2 | 2020-03-10 | p. 155-173 | 0035-3833
856 4 1 _uhttps://shs.cairn.info/journal-revue-philosophique-2020-2-page-155?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080
999 _c575930
_d575930