For a Western painter of the
old days, artist naturally anxious to tell a history and of magnifier
sublimates it, to represent the Flood is not so easy. How to give to
see, in the same time and on the same surface, the outburst of the
elements, the fear of human and animals, returned to a common
eradication, the vastness of chaos? Is it necessary that the table
illustrates the prefiguration of the last Judgement - what is also the
Flood, in a Mathieu saint for example - or the rescue of a tiny part of
humanity, through the character of Noah, itself announcing Christ?
These questions can appear futile. Although by traversing the “Visions
of the Flood”, such that the Magnin museum of Dijon the met in scene
this autumn, the visitor can find matter with reflexion largely there,
at least concerning the matter of painting.
Let us take for example
this copy of the Winter or the Flood, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). It
is carried out in 1784-1785 per Jean-François-Pierre Peyron
(1744-1814). It should be said in passing, this faithful and neat copy
is one of the sixteen painted versions - not less - same Chick table,
which can be seen in Louvre. Never Déluge more serene, less
chaotic, will have been balanced more, so much so that he more says of
it on a world emerging that on the end of humanity. All occurs as if
the painter had built itself, according to its own principles, its own
interpretation of a canonical account, without being attached to what
preceded it nor so that made its contemporaries. That is undoubtedly
enough to explain why it became a must for the painters as for the
collectors. Nevertheless the vision of Nicolas Poussin made question.
Turner (1775-1851), the English, to quote to only, found him well in
Poussin coldness, indifference, simplicity. It missed there the fear
without which, in its eyes, it is not flood. It thus made a Flood to
give its vision. With good to look at there, the debate does not miss
pace.
D a n i e l C
o n r o d
From Oct 11 to Jan 10 to
the museum Magnin, Dijon (21). Tel.: 03-80-67-11-10
