The historic gallery of portraits and paintings: and biographical review : containing a brief account of the lives of the moost celebrated men, in every age and country : and graphic imitations of the fines specimens of the arts, ancient and modern : with remarks, critical and explanatory (Band 2) (London: Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, 1808)

REBECCA AT THE WELL.

POUSSIN.
The subject of this picture we have already described
in our review of the merits of Rebecca and Eliezer, by
Paul Veronese, to which the reader is referred.
This picture, of which the figures are about one half of
the natural size, is one of the most valuable of Poussin,
and holds a distinguished place in the museum at Paris.
It is almost impossible, in the limits of this publication,
to give the particulars of the life of this artist, who was
not only the most eminent of the French school of paint-
ing, but even one of the most celebrated of the Italian:
should Italy claim the honour of his talents, and which
might be done with great propriety, since he resided
there almost the whole of his life, and his ashes repose
within her precincts.
This eminent painter was born at Andel in Normandy,
in 1594, and began his studies at Rome, in 1622, in the
twenty-eight year of his age. He came, according to
Bellori his biographer, as an artist already formed, and
finding soon that he had more to unlearn than to follow
of his former principles, renounced his national character,
and not only with the utmost ardour adopted, but suffered
himself to be wholly absorbed by the antique. Such was
his attachment to the ancients, that he may be said to
have often less imitated their spirit, than copied their re-