Problems in Fingerprinting the Dead
Problems in Fingerprinting the Dead has to do with recording a fingerprint over a period of time as the print becomes obscured due to the advancing stages of de-composition. In this case it’s the working of the surface, (my brushwork), that’s coming to the surface and obscuring the fingerprint.
by Nicolas Poussin
But what’s cool about this one, for me, is that the fingerprint is actually lifted from “The Dance to the Music of Time” by Nicolas Poussin, (that’s Poussin’s fingerprint) an unremarkable allegorical picture in which, remarkably, the entire surface is embedded with fingerprints, all made by the same digit, presumably the artist’s own.
I came across this information in an old book on fingerprints written by the Director of The Scotland Yard fingerprint department in the 70’s. The painting was cleaned in 1975 and the art people were puzzled by what appeared to be fingerprints in the varnish. After it was cleaned and the outer layer of varnish was removed, the fingerprints should’ve been gone. But what they discovered, instead, is that they became clearer. It became obvious that the fingerprints were in fact in the primer, imbedded in the gesso ground. All of the fingerprints had been made by the same digit – probably the left thumb – repeatedly pressed into the primer while it was still wet. We can only assume that the print is Poussin’s, but it seems likely considering the deliberation involved and the fact that he used studio assistants less than any of his contemporaries. Now, when I found this I was thrilled but I couldn’t find any other references to it in books about art, even books on Poussin.
Until last year when I was alerted to a mention of it in Matthew Colling’s book Matt’s Old Masters, in which he writes… “We assume that in the past art was deeper: it had moral, psychological and aesthetic depth and was never merely arbitrary. But I can think of an example of the self in old master-art that really is arbitrary. Poussin’s patron, who was later to become Pope Clement IX, gave Poussin the subject for The Dance to the Music of Time, but Poussin gave it something the Pope probably didn’t ask for: he carefully pressed his thumb into every inch of the ground when it was still wet, so its print can be clearly seen throughout the paint surface, unrelated to anything else that’s going on in the painting, either in the imagery or in the brushwork.
Poussin is considered the master of Perfect Order. Although we don’t know if he was particularly well educated he’s come to stand for reason and intellect, and a thoughtful sublimation of the impulsive, arbitrary, individual self. But here he is imposing something personal, his body’s own imprint in such an oddly literal way that someone ought to be braying out an explanation of it that they’ve read in a press release from the Turner Prize. It has today’s art-cultures feeling of official pointlessness and unhinged values."
One last thing about Poussin… to put this into perspective as an incident that’s not necessarily isolated in his work. This is from the essay “About Painting” by Dennis Young who teaches at N.S.C.A.D. He says that he “can be thought of as the first modern artist. It is not until Poussin, in the mid 17th century, that we find a painter claiming that the aim of visual art is 'delectation' (delight, enjoyment, pleasure), a statement that is regarded as revolutionary.”
-from the lecture Specificity