Page 29 - Revolution Republique Empire Restauration

Fig. 3 their readings of Homer,Virgil and Ovid, et al. these
masters envisaged an ideal nature, one ‘adorned
nostalgia for an aesthetic which, by 1790, was with the riches of the imagination, which only
already fast disappearing in the wake of the French genius can conceive and represent.’9 Valenciennes
Revolution, this would be misleading. Valenciennes used classical themes and motifs to directly contin-
in fact, detested the anachronistic and the purely ue and contribute to this tradition, the strongest
ornamental.8 So while he did not hesitate to examples of which known at the time were the
rearrange or embellish nature in his landscapes, his works of Poussin, himself a follower of Claude. It
priority was always to achieve an organic coherence was Poussin who, in large part, first perfected the
to depict a natural setting as it might logically, if not heroic landscape as a standard against which all
actually, exist. In his treatise Élemens de perspective… other such painting was measured; that is, arguably,
Valenciennes set out his rules for landscape painting until nearly one hundred and fifty years later, when
and described how the founders of the genre – Valenciennes revived this then somewhat faded
including Nicolas Poussin, Annibale Carracci, Titian genre and re-elevated landscape painting to equal
and Domenichino, whose works Valenciennes knew history painting in innovation and gravitas.
intimately through his own print collection – were
directly inspired by classical literature. Through

8. Whitney, op. cit., p. 227.
9. P.-H. Valenciennes, Élemens de perspective pratique à l’usage des artistes..., Paris,

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