Ринальдо и Армида

1616–1618

Patron Avice: anatomy, Poitou and a quarrel with his mother

His first Paris patron was the chevalier Henri Avice of Poitou, who, according to Félibien, introduced the painter to court circles and let him work in a hospital and study anatomy. Then Avice took Poussin to his country estate to paint interiors, but the chevalier’s mother regarded him as a useless parasite and used him as a servant, and Poussin left.

c. 1618

The road to Rome ends in Florence

Poussin longed to go to Italy to study ancient and Renaissance art, but around 1618 he got only as far as Florence: Bellori speaks vaguely of some misfortune, while in fact money seems to have run out. That he saw the Quattrocento before Venice and Rome probably meant a great deal for his development.

c. 1619

The Collège de Laon and the lessons of Fontainebleau

According to Félibien, after Florence Poussin settled in the Collège de Laon and worked hard at chiaroscuro, perspective and symmetry of composition. By his own later judgement he was strongly influenced by Frans Pourbus, Toussaint Dubreuil and Primaticcio — rejecting Mannerism, he found in them a circle of classical subjects close to his own.

1620s

The Cavaliere Marino takes the painter under his wing

Poussin’s work caught the attention of the Italian poet Cavaliere Marino, then living in France; his patronage let the thirty-year-old painter work in peace. According to Bellori the poet took him into his house and helped him with the invention of subjects and the rendering of emotion, and in Marino’s house Poussin gained access to a library with treatises by Alberti and Dürer and manuscripts and drawings by Leonardo.

1622

Six pictures for the Jesuits in just six days

A serious commission helped him pay his debts: the Jesuit college in Paris asked Poussin and other painters for six large paintings on the lives of Ignatius Loyola and the newly canonised Francis Xavier. According to Bellori the panels, in à la détrempe technique, were painted in only six days; they have not survived.

1622

Arrested for debt in Lyon on the way to Rome

In 1622 Poussin again tried to go to Rome but was arrested for debt in Lyon and never reached Italy.