POUSSIN, NICOLAS

born 1594, Villers, near Paris, Fr. died Nov. 19, 1665, Rome, Papal States 17th-century French painter, a leader of pictorial classicism in the Baroque period. Except for two years as court painter to Louis XIII, he spent his entire career in Rome. His paintings of scenes from the Bible and from Greco-Roman antiquity influenced generations of French painters, including Jacques-Louis David, J.-A.-D. Ingres, and Paul Czanne. Additional reading Comprehensive accounts of Poussin's life and art are given in Alain Mrot, Nicolas Poussin (1990); Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, 2 vol. (1967-68), The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin (1966), and The Drawings of Poussin (1979); and Christopher Wright, Poussin Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonn (1984). Early works are discussed in detail in Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin, the Early Years in Rome: The Origins of French Classicism (1988). Oskar Btschmann, Nicolas Poussin: Dialectics of Painting (1990), analyzes specific themes.