What to read after Poussin and Nature?

The French master Nicolas Poussin (15941665) painted some of the most influential landscapes in Western art, endowing them with a poetic quality that has been admired by artists as different as John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, and Paul Cezanne. This volume is the first in-depth examination of the landscapes in Poussins work. The artists pictorial imagination and intelligence are affirmed in 45 canvases, ranging from early Venetian-inspired pastorals to grandly structured scenes in which the artist meditated upon nature, its transformations, and its renewals. Nearly 50 of the artists drawings provide fascinating insight into Poussins thematic interests and working methods. Essays by internationally renowned scholars, including Museum curator Keith Christiansen, examine the visual, literary, and philosophical influences on Poussin as well as his relationships with his patrons and his place in the art-historical canon. Comparative paintings, drawings, and engravings by Poussin and others illuminate the essays, and a detailed catalogue of 113 of Poussins works explore questions of authorship, dating, interpretation, and execution, often righting earlier mistakes and raising new questions. This groundbreaking book gives the fullest possible representation of Poussin as a painter of landscapes, and provides a unique occasion to explore the personal side of this great artists creative achievement. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.