Poussin’s Sacrament of Marriage : An Interpretation

Abstract

A proper interpretation of Poussin’s Sacrament of Marriage , it is argued, should leave the question of the difference between “interpreting” and “describing” open. This is a particularly urgent requirement in the case of painting, whose muteness and ungrammaticalness ought to be respected in writing. A description of Poussin’s painting will need to account, at minimum, for three main aspects of the scene: its unexpected arrangement of the central trio of actors (Virgin Mary, Joseph, and the priest); its treatment of the cross on the ground made by the tiling of the temple floor; and, above all, the complex configuration of veiled woman and stone column placed at the picture’s left hand side. Bernini’s reaction to the woman and the column, recorded by Chantelou, ought to be taken seriously. The controversies and perplexities attending the theology of the marriage sacrament in post-Tridentine Rome are echoed, it is argued, in key elements of Poussin’s staging.