エリエゼルとリベカ

The story is from Genesis: Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for his son, and the man meets Rebecca drawing water at a well. Poussin painted it in 1648 for a Paris banker named Pointel, who had asked for a picture full of beautiful women in varied poses. What he left out became the famous part. In the biblical account Eliezer arrives with a train of ten camels, and Poussin painted none of them. Twenty years later, in 1668, the French Academy held a formal debate over exactly this. Could a painter drop an ugly but truthful detail for the sake of a calmer, nobler scene? One side said the camels belonged; the other defended Poussin's silence. He had been dead three years by then.