chapter 19 The Limits of ‘Mute Theology’: Charles Le Brun’s Lecture on Nicolas Poussin’s Ecstasy of Saint Paul Revisited

James Clifton

If I must glory (it is not expedient indeed): but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not, or out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I know not: God knoweth): That he was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words, which it is not granted to man to utter. 2 Corinthians 12:1–4; Douay-Rheims ∵

Nicolas Poussin’s painting of The Ecstasy of Saint Paul of 1649–1650 [Fig. 19.1], based on the apostle’s description of being ‘caught up to the third heaven’ in 2 Corinthians 12, entered the French royal collection, via Everhard Jabach and Cardinal Richelieu, in 1665 and was the subject of conférences (lectures) by two painters at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture shortly there- after: Jean Nocret on 6 December 1670 and Charles Le Brun a month later, on 10 January 1671.1 Nocret emphasised the formal qualities of the painting, es- pecially Poussin’s mastery of light and colour; Le Brun, by contrast, offered an

1 On the painting and the lectures, see Montagu J., “The Painted Enigma and French Seventeenth-Century Art”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968) 330–333; Rosenberg P., “Le ravissement de saint Paul”, in Rosenberg P. – Prat L.-A. (eds.), Nicolas Poussin 1594–1665, exh. cat., Grand Palais (Paris: 1994) 434–436; Dempsey C., “Poussin’s Ecstasy of Saint Paul: Charles Le Brun’s ‘over-interpretation’”, in Scott K. – Warwick G. (eds.), Commemorating Poussin: Reception and Interpretation of the Artist (Cambridge: 1999) 114–133; Mérot A. (ed.), Les Conférences de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture au XVIIe siècle, 2nd ed. (Paris: 2003) 202–207; and Cojannot-Le Blanc M., À la recherche du rameau d’or: L’invention du Ravissement de saint Paul de Nicolas Poussin à Charles Le Brun (Paris: 2012).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408944_020 Le Brun’s Lecture on Nicolas Poussin’s Ecstasy of Saint Paul 581

figure 19.1 Nicolas Poussin, Ecstasy of Saint Paul, 1649–1650. Oil on canvas, 148 × 120 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. 7288 © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY