Nicolas Poussin: Dialectics of Painting

(Paperback)

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Description

In this highly original and innovative study of Nicolas Poussin, one of seventeenth-century Europe's greatest artists, Oskar Btschmann presents a series of connected studies that offer new ways of interpreting the work and ideas of this brilliant and complex figure. This superbly illustrated book is a polemical challenge in a field of art-historical research that has often lost its way in insoluble disputes and erudite details.

Reviews

Like Poussins paintings, this is a highly polished work. In prose of great elegance, Bätschmann achieves an almost perfect balance between exposition and polemic . . . knowledge of the vast literature, discussed in useful footnotes, is offset by sensitive visual observations. * The Times Literary Supplement *
This is a tough but rewarding book, focusing not so much on the context of Poussin's book - its extrinsic framework - but intently on the work itself, and the attitude of Poussin to his subject-matter, from history painting to the holy family, and what Bätschmann calls tragic landscape. * The Sunday Times *
Bätschmann's book is a superb piece of work. His mastery of the existing literature is complete and, in conjunction with detailed visual scrutiny of the paintings themselves, he deploys it with both insight and originality. * British Journal of Aesthetics *
[This book is] required reading. * Art History *

Author Bio

Oskar Btschmann is Professor Emeritus of Early Modern Art History at the University of Bern. His books include Hans Holbein (Reaktion Books, 1997, Revised and Expanded Second Edition 2013) and Giovanni Bellini (Reaktion Books, 2007).