Nicolas Poussin (Born June 1594) was born in Les Andelys, Normandy, France. He was a draftsman and painter who founded the French Classical tradition. Poussin spent virtually all of his working life in Rome – he died in November 19, 1665 in Rome, Italy. He specialized in history paintings. His paintings depicted the scenes from mythology, ancient history, and the Bible —that are notable for their dramatic force and narrative clarity. His earliest works are characterized by a coloristic richness and sensuality indebted to Venetian art. However, by 1633 he had renounced this explicitly seductive style in favor of a more disciplined and rational manner that owed much to antiquity and the Classicism of Raphael. Poussin executed the majority of his paintings on canvas in an intensely idealized style. As years passed by, Poussin’s art underwent a further transformation, especially towards the end of his life.
He diversified to depict landscapes and a group of extremely pantheistic figurative works that were in the end concerned with the harmony and order of nature. In the first half of the 18th century, his reputation was eclipsed, but it enjoyed a spectacular revival later that century in Jacques-Louis David’s neoclassical art. The artist received an education in letters and Latin, but early on he had showed a liking for drawing. The itinerant painter Quentin Varin encouraged his talent when he visited Les Andelys in 1611 and he became Poussin’s first art teacher. In 1612, Poussin left for Paris where he studied architecture, perspective, and anatomy and worked with Ferdinand Elle and Georges Lallemand, both minor masters. During this period Poussin was introduced to engravings the Italian Masters’ Renaissance. He was so much inspired by this work.
