On the 19th of November 1665, Nicolas Poussin, aged seventy one, died in Rome. He was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, and in 1830 was commemorated with a monument donated by Chateaubriand. Despite the fact that most of his working life was spent in Italy, Poussin is considered the leading painter of the classical French Baroque Style. Among Poussin’s patrons were the king of France Louis XIII, the Italian scholar and patron of arts Cassiano dal Pozzo, and the controversial Cardinal Richelieu.
When he first arrived in Rome in 1624, he was still an unformed painter. But soon he became one of the most prolific and renowned artists of his time. In his works he referred to Latin literature, mostly Ovid’s Metamorphoses
, stories from the Old Testament, ancient history and myths, and later in his career he would explore the concept of the…
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