Poussin and the Poetics of Painting

THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE ADONE

With the contributions of Beni and Galileo, the Ariosto/Tasso debates culminated in a prolix Aristotelian commentary so characteristic of the sixteenth century and the private critical musings of the greatest mind of the next. Indeed Galileo appears in the supreme poetic expression of this new age, the Adone of Giambattista Marino. In a typical instance of mythological titillation, Marino casts Galileo as the new Endymion, whose telescope enables him to gaze immodestly upon a fully exposed moon. Omnivorous in its assimilation of classical and modern culture, the Adone would provoke a radical reevaluation of the epic in the terms of structure, poetic language, and the legacy of antiquity that had framed the discourse on the Gerusalemme.

Marino calculated that his return to Italy from the Court of Maria de Medici, on the heels of the much-anticipated publication of his epic, would be auspicious. When he learned of Maffeo Barberini's election as Urban VIII, he exclaimed, “abbiamo un papa poeta, virtuoso e nostro amicissimo,” referring to his cordial encounters with the cardinal, the author of celebrated Pindaric odes. Poussin followed in his wake. The painter from Normandy arrived in Rome to see Marino feted in the academies and showered with titles and honors. Yet no sooner had his protector left for his birthplace, Naples, than he fell ill and died. And no sooner had Marino's obsequies at the Roman and Neapolitan academies concluded, than his work and his legacy came under fire.