Nicolas Poussin is Still Speaking to Us

[sluggozim61]

Pareidoliacs, sorry if this lights you up! [emoji2962][emoji2962]
This Poussin is a Where's Waldo of artifacts, all retrievable with a properly blurred smoky lens, essentially what I did to create the second image, a little PSE blur and contrast. See what artifacts or areas of interest you find. I will give you one, wheat field, middle left, looks like something concealed in there. I will post the rest of mine tomorrow for comparison. I really want that wheat field! He put a lot of working into hiding stuff in it![emoji848]

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[dog the treasure hunter]

I think these guys had secret knowledge.Interesting that they didnt want the message lost . But like you said, hidden in plain site. Makes me wonder who where they hidding the message from. I bet your technique would work on photos of stones in the field that had work done to them but where taken at the wrong time of day, to help bring out the hidden symbols. Very interesting .

 

[sdcfia]

Pareidoliacs, sorry if this lights you up! [emoji2962][emoji2962]
This Poussin is a Where's Waldo of artifacts, all retrievable with a properly blurred smoky lens, essentially what I did to create the second image, a little PSE blur and contrast. See what artifacts or areas of interest you find. I will give you one, wheat field, middle left, looks like something concealed in there. I will post the rest of mine tomorrow for comparison. I really want that wheat field! He put a lot of working into hiding stuff in it![emoji848]View attachment 1898322

The heavy hitter of hidden messages. https://www.renneslechateau.nl/2007/11/13/nicolas-poussin/ What was the secret? Many theories appearing in books, movies, websites, et al:

 

[dog the treasure hunter]

Great link sdcfia. Thanks for posting it. So much interesting stuff in it. Cant wait to explore more of it.

 

[weekender]

Sluggozim61,
Awesome work!!!
I'm wondering if the R/B/G/Y filters would uncover anymore secrets?
-Weekender

 

[sluggozim61]

Filtering absolutely works and thank you so much.
My best tints for seeing contrast and detail are purple and gray, and I reckon everyone is different, so i try to resolve to gray.

Great example I am working right now, the lighter shade background above the slightly darker map area, her nose level and above. Just a touch of blur......hello?

The sky is full of 'structures' and writing. Just follow the shading. Resolve artifacts layer by layer.

Think of the process as trying to figure out a word with the vowels removed. The vowels represent the obscuring technique.

Poussin is no where near this clever. If anyone doubted this was a Da Vinci, no one else could do this then and maybe not even now. For Poussin, I figured out the trees and bushes but my biggest curiosity with him are those paintings with posed arms and legs everywhere. He has to be hiding something in all that flesh. And the darn wheat field, making progress on that one.

enjoy! Please try this at home![emoji5]

 

[sdcfia]

Filtering absolutely works and thank you so much. ...

The sky is full of 'structures' and writing. Just follow the shading. Resolve artifacts layer by layer....

Sure, easy enough with today's technology. But how was this technique to be accomplished during the Renaissance period?

You've demonstrated the concept of 'hidden in plain sight' with some of your posts - clear images with potential secondary meanings. If Poussin and others were hiding messages in their paintings, it's my opinion that their images were not obscured, but their alternative interpretations may have been meant for those who 'had eyes to see'. IMO, you're being partially sidetracked by pareidolia.

 

[sluggozim61]

Whatever was hidden or obscured by these guys has to be retrievable with capabilities available then. I printed this image and took it to a rock shop. The owner, a good sport, helped me test all sorts of polished clear stones, different shapes, different colors. A cabuchon cut crystal did the best at getting thru the hatching. I suspect a lens was created to be used to 'see' what was concealed. I bought a book of all his notes and drawings to look for just that.

Pareidolia is always a concern for me. In this image, I cant identify anything but I see patterns of consistency across the sky. Like the consistent height of horizontal scrawlings and when near each other are equally spaced. That has the charactetistics of writing. The "5" or whatever it is can be seen without blurring at all. Is that pareidolia? I dont think so.

I really need graphics help to penetrate the hatching and focus what is underneath![emoji6]

More wheat field. Some unblurred areas of interest. Anything in the tree? Staff kinda pointing that way.

keep looking, keep challenging. Thanks.

 

[Al D]

I do not see how you can glean anything relevant from a digital copy of another copy of an original painting, there is no telling what you are likely to see, anything up to and including alien faces I suspect.
unless you are working with the originals?

 

[sluggozim61]

there are lots of excellent hi resolution images available on Wikimedia Commons, for use in the public domain. This is not one of them.[emoji846]

For me, any staff, finger, the length of a single flower stem or other pointing item triggers a chase response. Why put it there? Why that angle? Why is the stem that long? Where is the finger pointing?

I am working on this one. Pointers everywhere. Easy to spot anomalies, just have not worked them out yet.

 

[sdcfia]

I am working on this one. Pointers everywhere. Easy to spot anomalies, just have not worked them out yet.

If you look closely enough, you can likely find many 'anomalies' in any artists' paintings. Odd brushstrokes, aging of paint on canvas, randomness of color results, imperfections, et al. If you look even closer, you can likely find more and more of them. I encourage your quest, but I think there is a danger of putting yourself in a situation where you can't see the forest for the trees.

It's like the 'treasure clues' that folks discover when they roam the mountains looking for hidden riches. Which discovery might be conveying a clear message to a curious searcher: an obviously carved symbol in rock that has a meaning only for an informed searcher, or a naturally-weathered rock outcropping that may look like a poodle in the right light and from a certain viewpoint?

Below is arguably Poussin's most well-known 'hidden message' painting, The Shepheds of Arcadia. This painting has been pondered by esoterists for centuries, not by analyzing anomalies in the paint, but by trying to figure out why the artist chose the objects in the painting - setting, characters, alignments, words, colors and other easy-to-see things. By the way, here is an interesting site that discusses the work and other interesting topics: http://thegreatlosttreasure.info/Page2.html

 

[sluggozim61]

Ah, yes everyone focuses on that central subject, exactly what he wants to happen. He is focusing the observers eyes to the same place as the subjects. Forget that if you are looking for secrets. Look at the mountain profile in the background on the right of the woman , low-res image ok for this. I flipped it horizontal, mirror image, follow the profile and shading. No pareidolia risk, following hard lines. No fluffy bunnies.

Pic 1: Profile of effigy of woman in repose like on the top of a sarcophagus, Mary M.?
Pic 2: Following the shading, looks like old map view of Iberian Peninsula, down to Gibraltar and then down to Africa, the Med on the right. No theory for purpose.
Pic 3: Most interesting to me is that Poussin's mountain profile aligns remarkably well with the Da Vinci Brittany coastal profile in the early Mona Lisa, over 100 years apart.

Were they given the same knowledge to conceal in their Art, e.g. pointing to the dolmen cove and the first map marker? The evidence is building to support such a notion.

The point about anomalies or artifacts being in all paintings if one looks hard enough is probably valid. In my case, I dont have to look hard at all, they reveal their presence in some form that I am visually sensitive to, sort of OCD, and then I chase. I have Richard Verdi's book about Poussin with all his works. I flipped thru it marking "areas of interest" with a sticky. Maybe 20% are marked. I have also checked works by Botticelli, Raphael and others and see nothing anomalous at all. Tintoretto is obvious, and I suspect Goya drawings.

These guys were geniuses in their own ways and we just cannot brush off, pun, what they could accomplish in concealing secrets in plain sight.

Two ways to look at retrieving any hidden secrets.
1) Retrieval can be achieved with then current capabilities and technology;
2) Retrieval was deliberately obstructed to stall discovery beyond then current capabilities and technologies.

I am on number 1 right now.

decloakingsecrets.com is my hobby website.
onward.View attachment 1899473