Poussin, Venus and Adonis, 1626
Nicolas Poussin is a French painter (17th century) born in 1594 (June 15) and died in 1665 (November 19). Great painter of classicism (artistic movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which essentially leads to meditation), painter of history, religious paintings, as well as mythology, he is one of the greatest French classical painters. It was at the age of eighteen that he left the family home for his career as an artist, going to live in Paris. He then wanted to go to Rome to improve his skills, but he was unable to do so, forced to stop for the first time in Florence, then in Lyon. He reached the Italian capital in 1624, and nearly fifteen years later he was appointed 1st painter to the King of France, Louis XIII at that time. Feeling the need to see his family again, Nicolas Poussin returned to Italy in 1642. He died there in November 1665. He is buried in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina. We remember several works by him, among others The Death of Germanicus (1628), as well as The Abduction of the Sabines (1634-1635), today in the Louvre.