63 Facts About Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome.

Nicolas Poussin returned to Paris for a brief period to serve as First Painter to the King under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, but soon returned to Rome and resumed his more traditional themes.

Nicolas Poussin's work is characterized by clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color.

Nicolas Poussin befriended a number of artists who shared his classicizing tendencies, and met important patrons, such as Cardinal Francesco Barberini and the antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo.

The commissions Poussin received for modestly scaled paintings of religious, mythological, and historical subjects allowed him to develop his individual style in works such as The Death of Germanicus, The Massacre of the Innocents, and the first of his two series of the Seven Sacraments.

Nicolas Poussin was persuaded to return to France in 1640 to be First Painter to the King but, dissatisfied with the overwhelming workload and the court intrigues, returned permanently to Rome after a little more than a year.

Nicolas Poussin's early biographer was his friend Giovanni Pietro Bellori, who relates that Poussin was born near Les Andelys in Normandy and that he received an education that included some Latin, which would stand him in good stead.

Nicolas Poussin arrived in Paris during the regency of Marie de Medici, when art was flourishing as a result of the royal commissions given by Marie de Medici for the decoration of her palace, and by the rise of wealthy Paris merchants who bought art.

However, Nicolas Poussin was not a member of the powerful guild of master painters and sculptors, which had a monopoly on most art commissions and brought lawsuits against outsiders like Nicolas Poussin who tried to break into the profession.

Nicolas Poussin worked for three months in the studio of the Flemish painter Ferdinand Elle, who painted almost exclusively portraits, a genre that was of little interest to Poussin.

Nicolas Poussin studied anatomy and perspective, but the most important event of his first residence in Paris was his discovery of the royal art collections, thanks to his friendship with Alexandre Courtois, the valet de chambre of Marie de Medicis.

Marino took him into his household, and, when he returned to Rome in 1623, invited Nicolas Poussin to join him.

Nicolas Poussin remained in Paris to finish his earlier commissions, then arrived to Rome in the spring of 1624.

Nicolas Poussin was thirty when he arrived in Rome in 1624.

Nicolas Poussin could visit the churches and convents to study the works of Raphael and other Renaissance painters, as well as the more recent works of Carracci, Guido Reni and Caravaggio.

Nicolas Poussin studied the art of painting nudes at the Academy of Domenichino, and frequented the Academy of Saint Luke, which brought together the leading painters in Rome, and whose head in 1624 was another French painter, Simon Vouet, who offered lodging to Poussin.

Nicolas Poussin became acquainted with other artists in Rome and tended to befriend those with classicizing artistic leanings: the French sculptor Francois Duquesnoy whom he lodged with in 1626 in via dei Maroniti; the French artist Jacques Stella; Claude Lorraine; Domenichino; Andrea Sacchi; and joined an informal academy of artists and patrons opposed to the current Baroque style that formed around Joachim von Sandrart.

Rome offered Nicolas Poussin a flourishing art market and an introduction to an important number of art patrons.

Nicolas Poussin became ill with syphilis, but refused to go to the hospital, where the care was extremely poor, and he was unable to paint for months.

Nicolas Poussin survived by selling the paintings he had for a few ecus.

Cardinal Barberini and Cassiano dal Pozzo returned to Rome in 1626, and by their patronage Nicolas Poussin received two major commissions.

In 1627, Nicolas Poussin painted The Death of Germanicus for Cardinal Barberini.

Thanks to Cassiano dal Pozzo's influence, Nicolas Poussin was chosen to paint the Saint Erasmus altarpiece, following Pietro da Cortona's original design.

Nicolas Poussin painted the Massacre of the Innocents for the Banker Vincenzo Giustiniani; the jewel thief and art swindler, Fabrizio Valguarnera, bought Plague of Ashdod and commissioned The Empire of Flora.

Nicolas Poussin received his first French commissions from the Marechal de Crequi, the French envoy to Italy, later, from Cardinal de Richelieu for a series of Bacchanales.

Nicolas Poussin's house was at the foot of Trinite des Monts, near the city gate, where other foreigners and artists lived; its exact location is not known but it was opposite the church of Sant'Atanasio dei Greci.

When Nicolas Poussin declined, Noyers sent his cousins, Roland Freart de Chambray and Paul Freart, to Rome to persuade Nicolas Poussin to come home, offering him the title of First Painter to the King, plus a substantial residence at the Tuileries Palace.

Nicolas Poussin was expected to provide designs for royal tapestries and the front pieces for books from the royal printing house.

Nicolas Poussin was subjected to considerable criticism from the partisans of other French painters, including his old friend Simon Vouet.

Nicolas Poussin completed a painting of the Last Supper, eight cartoons for the Gobelins tapestry manufactory, drawings for a proposed series of grisaille paintings of the Labors of Hercules for the Louvre, and a painting of the Triumph of Truth for Cardinal Richelieu.

Nicolas Poussin was increasingly unhappy with the court intrigues and the overwhelming number of commissions.

Nicolas Poussin still had a few important patrons in Rome, including Cassiano dal Pozzo and the future Cardinal Camillo Massimi, but began to paint more frequently for the patrons he had found in Paris.

In 1647, Andre Felibien, the secretary of the French Embassy in Rome, became a friend and painting student of Nicolas Poussin, and published the first book devoted entirely to his work.

Nicolas Poussin's growing number of French patrons included the Abbe Louis Fouquet, brother of Nicolas Fouquet, the celebrated superintendent of finances of the young Louis XIV.

Nicolas Poussin commissioned from Poussin some of his most important works, including the second series of the Seven Sacraments, painted between 1644 and 1648, and his Landscape with Diogenes.

Nicolas Poussin lived an austere and comfortable life, working slowly and apparently without assistants.

The painter Charles Le Brun joined him in Rome for three years, and Nicolas Poussin's work had a major influence on Le Brun's style.

Nicolas Poussin responded by making two self-portraits, completed together in 1649.

Nicolas Poussin took a large part of his themes from the Old Testament, which offered more variety and the stories were often more vague and gave him more freedom to invent.

Nicolas Poussin painted different versions of the stories of Eliazer and Rebecca from the Book of Genesis and made three versions of Moses saved from the waters.

Nicolas Poussin's painting of Christ in the sky in his painting of Saint Francis-Xavier was criticized by partisans of Simon Vouet for having "Too much pride, and resembling the god Jupiter more than a God of Mercy".

Nicolas Poussin responded that "he could not and should not imagine a Christ, no matter what he is doing, looking like a gentle father, considering that, when he was on earth among men, it was difficult to look him in the face".

Nicolas Poussin created The Birth of Venus, telling the story of the Roman goddess through an elaborate composition full of dynamic figures for the French patron, Cardinal Richelieu, who had commissioned the Bacchanals.

Nicolas Poussin painted two versions, one in 1634, now in the Metropolitan Museum, and the other in 1637, now in the Louvre.

Nicolas Poussin painted two versions illustrating a story of Ovid in the Metamorphoses in which Venus mourning the death of Adonis after a hunting accident, transforms his blood into the color of the anemone flower.

Nicolas Poussin was unable to complete the painting because of the trembling of his hand, and the figures on the right are unfinished.

Nicolas Poussin painted scenes from the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso, published in 1581, and one of the most popular books in Poussin's lifetime.

Nicolas Poussin's painting Renaud and Armide illustrated the death of the Christian knight Arnaud at the hands of the magician Armide.

Nicolas Poussin is an important figure in the development of landscape painting.

Nicolas Poussin's landscapes were very carefully composed, with the vertical trees and classical columns carefully balanced by the horizontal bodies of water and flat building stones, all organized to lead the eye to the often tiny figures.

Nicolas Poussin's skies played a particularly important part, from the blue skies and gray clouds with bright sunlit borders to illustrate scenes of tranquility and the serenity of faith, such as the Landscape with Saint John on Patmos, painted in the late 1630s before his departure for Paris; or extremely dark, turbulent and threatening, as a setting for tragic events, as in his Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe.

Between 1650 and 1655, Nicolas Poussin painted a series of paintings now often called "townscapes", where classical architecture replaces trees and mountains in the background.

Nicolas Poussin's goal was clarity of expression achieved by disegno or 'nobility of design' in preference to colore or color.

Nicolas Poussin studied the Antique as well as works such as Titian's Bacchanals at the Casino Ludovisi and the paintings of Domenichino and Guido Reni.

Contrary to the standard studio practice of his time, Nicolas Poussin did not make detailed figure drawings as preparation for painting, and he seems not to have used assistants in the execution of his paintings.

Nicolas Poussin produced few drawings as independent works, aside from the series of drawings illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses he made early in his career.

Nicolas Poussin's work had an important influence on the 17th-century paintings of Jacques Stella and Sebastien Bourdon, the Italian painter Pier Francesco Mola, and the Dutch painter Gerard de Lairesse.

The influence of Nicolas Poussin was evident in paintings such as Brutus and Death of Marat.

French writers were seeking to create a national art movement and Nicolas Poussin became one of their heroes: the founding father of the French School; he appears in plays, stories and novels as well as physiognomic studies.

Nicolas Poussin was the first, and only, to capture the nature of Italy.

Nicolas Poussin was one of the greatest innovators found in the history of painting.

Nicolas Poussin arrived in the middle of the school of mannerism, where the craft was preferred to the intellectual role of art.

Every time I leave a Nicolas Poussin, I know better who I am.