Poussin, Nicolas

Nicolas Poussin, (born June 1594, Les Andelys, Normandy [France]—died November 19, 1665, Rome, Papal States [Italy]), French painter and draftsman who founded the French Classical tradition. He spent virtually all of his working life in Rome, where he specialized in history paintings—depicting scenes from the Bible, ancient history, and mythology—that are notable for their narrative clarity and dramatic force. His earliest works are characterized by a sensuality and colouristic richness indebted to Venetian art, especially to Titian, but by 1633 Poussin had repudiated this overtly seductive style in favour of a more rational and disciplined manner that owed much to the Classicism of Raphael and antiquity. The artist executed the majority of his canvases in this intensely idealized style. Toward the end of his life, Poussin’s art underwent a further transformation as he diversified to depict landscapes and a group of profoundly pantheistic allegorical works that were ultimately concerned with the order and harmony of nature. Though his reputation was eclipsed in the first half of the 18th century, it enjoyed a spectacular revival later that century in the Neoclassical art of Jacques-Louis David and his followers and has remained high ever since.