POUSSIN, Nicolas, Featured Paintings in Detail

POUSSIN, Nicolas

Featured Paintings in Detail

POUSSIN, NicolasDance to the Music of Timec. 1638Oil on canvas, 83 x 104 cmWallace Collection, London

POUSSIN, NicolasDance to the Music of Time (detail)c. 1638Oil on canvas, 83 x 104 cmWallace Collection, London




POUSSIN, NicolasThe Death of Germanicus1627Oil on canvas, 148 x 198 cmInstitute of Arts, Minneapolis

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Death of Germanicus(detail)1627Oil on canvas, 148 x 198 cmInstitute of Arts, Minneapolis




POUSSIN, NicolasContinence of Scipio 1643-1649 Oil on canvas, 114 x 163 cm The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

POUSSIN, NicolasContinence of Scipio (detail)1643-1649 Oil on canvas, 114 x 163 cm The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow




POUSSIN, NicolasThe Rape of the Sabine Women I1634-35Oil on canvas, 154,6 x 209,9 cmMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Rape of the Sabine Women I (detail)1634-35Oil on canvas, 154,6 x 209,9 cmMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York






POUSSIN, NicolasThe Rape of the Sabine Women 1637-1638Oil on canvas, 398.8 × 515.6 cmMusée du Louvre, Paris

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Rape of the Sabine Women (detail)1637-1638Oil on canvas, 398.8 × 515.6 cmMusée du Louvre, Paris





POUSSIN, NicolasThe Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem II1637Oil on canvas, 147 x 198 cmKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem II (detail)1637Oil on canvas, 147 x 198 cmKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna







POUSSIN, NicolasThe Destruction and Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem1625 - 1626 Oil on canvas, 145.8 x 194 cm The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Destruction and Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem (detail)1625 - 1626 Oil on canvas, 145.8 x 194 cm The Israel Museum, Jerusalem





POUSSIN, NicolasThe Adoration of the Golden Calfc. 1634Oil on canvas, Iaid down on board, 154 x 214 cmNational Gallery, London

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Adoration of the Golden Calf (detail)c. 1634Oil on canvas, Iaid down on board, 154 x 214 cmNational Gallery, London





POUSSIN, NicolasThe Inspiration of the Poetc. 1630Oil on canvas, 183 x 213 cmMusée du Louvre, Paris

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Inspiration of the Poet (detail)c. 1630Oil on canvas, 183 x 213 cmMusée du Louvre, Paris



POUSSIN, Nicolas, Featured Paintings in Detail

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POUSSIN, NicolasThe Inspiration of the Poet

Poussin spent almost all his career in Rome painting in isolation. He endeavoured to create a clear visual language that would appeal to the spectator's mind and affect him rationally rather than through the emotions His oeuvre is one of the supreme expressions of classicism in French art. The subject of the Inspiration of the Poet remains under discussion: it is possible that the young man on the right, being inspired by Apollo, is Virgil, and the figure standing on the left Calliope, muse of epic poetry. In both figures

there are distinct references to antique sculpture, as so often in Poussin's work, and the golden light shows the influence of the great Venetian painters of the sixteenth century.The appearance of the muse Calliope has led to the suggestion that the picture was painted in honour of a recently dead poet.

POUSSIN, NicolasDance to the Music of Time

The painting was commissioned by Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi who probably devised the subject: Poverty, Labour, Wealth and Pleasure dance an eternal round to the music of Time.

Even if the Poussin's depiction of human life dancing a roundelay to the music of time takes up an age-old idea, the subject may have been suggested to him by Giulio Rospigliosi, who commissioned the painting.

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Death of Germanicus

The young Roman general Germanicus has just been poisoned by his jealous adoptive father, the emperor Tiberius. On his deathbed, Germanicus asks his friends to avenge his murder and his wife to endure her sorrow bravely. The subject of this, Poussin's first major history painting, comes from the Annales of the Roman historian Tacitus. The event

occurred in 19 CE.

A key work in Western painting, this tragic picture presents a moral lesson in stoic heroism, seen especially in the restraint and dignity of the mourning soldiers. This painting became the model for countless deathbed scenes for two centuries to come, particularly for Neoclassical art around 1800. Many powerful human themes figure here: death, suffering, injustice,

grief, loyalty, and revenge.

Poussin drew on Roman antiquity for the form as well as the subject of this painting. The figures are arranged in a frieze-like composition which was almost certainly derived from the arrangement of figures on classical sarcophagi.

POUSSIN, NicolasContinence of Scipio

Scipio Aemilianus, Publius Cornelius, African Minor (185-129 BC) Roman statesman and general. He commanded the Roman troops in the third Punic war, which ended by the capture and destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. A legend says that he was presented with a young beautiful captive, but founding out that she was betrothed, he returned her to

her fiancé. The victor is crowned with a laurel wreath not only for his military valour, but also for the good sense and generosity of his action, which is greatly appreciated by Roman warriors

and Carthaginians alike.

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Rape of the Sabine Women I

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Poussin created two interpretations of this theme, The Rape of the Sabine Women and The Abduction of the Sabine Women.

Both paintings tell the legendary story of the men of Rome acquiring wives for themselves by kidnapping them from their Sabine neighbors. As the story goes, shortly after the founding of Rome, there were very few women, so Romulus held a festival, inviting members of the neighboring towns. At the festival, on the signal of Romulus, the Roman men

abducted the women to take them for their wives.

In this context, the word “rape” is more closely tied to “abduction,” as in the act of taking the women, rather than sexually assaulting them. This theme has been revisited throughout antiquity in paintings, sculptures, and literature. Poussin’s work now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Rape of the Sabine Women

Musée du Louvre, Paris

Painted for Cardinal Luigi Omodei. The subject, taken from Plutarch's life of Romulus, illustrates the moment when the Romans seize the Sabine women in order to take them for their wives.

Poussin painted an initial version of this composition circa 1635 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The painting and its doubleAccording to Bellori, the Italian biographer of Poussin, the canvas was painted for Cardinal Aluigi Omodei, who kept it until his death in 1685. His inheritors then sold it to Louis XIV. The king was anxious to build up a collection of the artist's works - despite his absence from the Parisian scene, Poussin was still a model for the painters of the Académie. He had already

completed a composition on the same theme in 1633-34 for Maréchal de Créqui, who was then on a mission to Rome. This first version is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The same subjects were often painted by Poussin after an interval of several years, so this is not an isolated example. It means we are able to judge his ability to inject new life into his

compositions, the most famous example being that of the Sacraments, where he executed two series of seven paintings.

Women for the greatness of RomeThe painting depicts one of the mythical episodes surrounding the history of ancient Rome. The city has just been founded by Romulus, and the Romans wish to ensure the future

prosperity of their young nation. As there is a lack of women to provide the necessary offspring, they plan a mass abduction. With this in mind, they invite the neighboring Sabines to a feast during which they seize the women and drive off the men. Three years later, the Sabines attack Rome in revenge. But the conflict is prevented thanks to the women, who stand

between their brothers and their husbands (to whom they have become reconciled). Thus peace was achieved between the two peoples.

Poussin has chosen to illustrate the scene of the abduction. Romulus stands on the left, dominating the proceedings, in a pose directly inspired by Imperial statues. In the central section, the painter emphasizes the panic and confrontation between the men and women. This all takes place against an architectural background in linear perspective, which gives the work its

vanishing point. Also of interest is the way the artist has organized the figures, using two diagonal lines that start from the edges of the picture and join up where there is a gap in the landscape, thus making the work more dynamic.

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem II

In the last part of the 1630s Poussin's art underwent a rapid metamorphosis. One of the best examples of this is the Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. It is dry in handling and agitated in composition, and has that peculiar unattractiveness of surface on which Poussin was to dwell so much in his later years. His denial of the sensual

quality of painting was deliberate: this preoccupation with surface texture is found in all his pictures of around 1630.

Yet the Vienna picture succeeds by the mood it creates. The subject is one of prime importance for Jewish as well as Christian history - the final and irrevocable loss of the Jews' holiest place - and Poussin has concentrated on the mood of wanton destruction.

This is the second version of The Destruction of the Temple by Poussin, the first version has come down to us only in an engraving. Here the individual scenes are framed between the regular succession of huge columns. It is evident that the artist has already begun to study Rome's ancient monuments, as a comparison with antique sculptures

such as the Trophies of Marius reveals.

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Destruction and Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem

Nicolas Poussin was the foremost exponent and practitioner of seventeenth-century Classicism. This work from his early Italian period (1625-1626) was commissioned by Poussin' patron Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew and secretary of Pope Urban VIII, and was offered as a gift to Cardinal Richelieu, the French head of state.

Barberini led a papal legation in a vain attempt to reconcile France and Spain, at the time engaged in a bloody war. Poussin draws a parallel in the painting between his patron, the would-be peacemaker, and the enlightened pagan emperor Titus, who tried unsuccessfully to prevent the ruin of Jerusalem and its temple.

The composition is divided between the image of the Temple engulfed in flames in the background and the chaotic struggle, dominated by the striking figure of Titus on his white mount, in the foreground. A sense of drama, with the clash of arms and flashes of golden light from the Temple vessels, suffuses the entire work.

Classical Roman architecture and sculpture provided sources for Poussin's painting. The scene seems to be a Roman city: the soldiers' dress is taken from reliefs on Roman sarcophagi; the facade of the Temple resembles that of the Pantheon; the figure of Titus was inspired by the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline; and the menorah

derives from the famous depiction on the Arch of Titus.

After Richelieu's death, the painting was inherited by his niece, who then sold it. It changed hands many times and eventually reached England. Its whereabouts were unknown from the late 1700s until 1995, when it was rediscovered by the art historian Sir Denis Mahon, restored to its original state, and donated to the Israel Museum in 1998.

POUSSIN, NicolasThe Adoration of the Golden Calf

The Adoration of the Golden Calf was originally paired with the Crossing of the Red Sea now in Melbourne. Both illustrate episodes from Exodus in the Old Testament; this painting relates to chapter 32.

In the wilderness of Sinai the children of Israel, disheartened by Moses' long absence, asked Aaron to make them gods to lead them. Having collected all their gold earrings, Aaron melted them down into the shape of a calf, which they worshipped.

In the background on the left Moses and Joshua come down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Hearing singing and seeing 'the calf and the dancing...Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.' The tall bearded figure in white is Aaron still 'making proclamation' of a

feast to the false god.

Poussin is said to have made little figures of clay to use as models, and the story is confirmed by the dancers in the foreground. They are a mirror image of a pagan group of nymphs and satyrs carousing in Poussin's earlier Bacchanalian Revel also in the National Gallery.

Within a majestic landscape painted in the bold colours Poussin learned from Titian, before a huge golden idol more bull than calf (and many earrings' worth), these Israelite revellers give homage to the potency of Poussin's vision of antiquity. As on a sculpted relief or painted Greek vase, figures are shown in suspended animation, heightened gestures or

movements isolated from those of their neighbours, so that the effect of the whole is at one and the same time violent and static.

POUSSIN, Nicolas

A French classical painter, Nicolas Poussin has been an inspiration for countless number of great artists since the 17th century.

At the age of 18, Poussin ran away from his hometown in Normandy, France, to Paris and began studying in the studios of the Flemish painters Ferdinand Elle and George Lallemand, who later became famous as the teachers of the great Nicolas Poussin.

At the age of 10, he traveled to Rome, where he received two major commissions, Death of Germanicus and the Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus, the latter of which was publicly debuted, although it marked the last time he was to receive a public commission from the church. After his first public debut, Poussin fell seriously ill, and was taken to the house of his friend, Jacques Dughet,

whose daughter nursed him back to health. The next year, Poussin and Dughet’s daughter, Anna Maria, were married.

While in Rome, Poussin met with many other artists, and befriended those with classical leanings, like himself, eventually forming an informal academy of artists and patrons, all opposed to the overbearing Baroque style. After his last church commission,

Poussin relied solely on the private patronage for his works, and so in 1640, returned to France an was hired as s court painter by Louix VIII, who gave him the title of First Painter in Ordinary.

Although he completed many works during his stay in France, he grew disgusted with French social intrigue, and so he withdrew back to Rome, where he continued to complete a great number of varied works each year. In his later life, Poussin suffered

declining health and a tremor in his hand, which may have affected his painting ability. Upon his death, he left no heirs, except for his wife’s brother, whom he adopted as a son, and who took the Poussin name. After his death, King Louis XIV amasses a huge

amount of his works, many of which now hang on the Louvre, which has an entire gallery dedicated to just Poussin’s works.

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POUSSIN, Nicolas, Featured Paintings in Detail