The Unknown Masterpiece

At the end of 1612, the young painter Nicolas Poussin presented himself at the door of Porbus, the great painter he worshipped. He takes advantage of the old master Frenhofer to follow him and enter. In the studio, he was fascinated by a painting commissioned by Marie de Médicis, Mary the Egyptian, but Master Frenhofer studied painting, and expressed his opinion: Porbus copied nature as an attentive observer, but he failed to restore life. "The blood doesn't palpitate under this ivory skin." He reproaches him for having hesitated between two systems, drawing and colour. Inspired by Holbein, Titian, Dürer or Veronese, he forgot that "the mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it". With a few brushstrokes, Frenhofer breathed life into the work, but deplored his inability to finish his own canvas, La Belle Noiseuse, which had monopolized most of his art for ten years, but without achieving the absolute perfection that is his artistic ideal, a work that must show the soul of the model, while reflecting that of the artist.