Nicolas Poussin

Poussin built paintings the way an architect builds: everything measured, nothing accidental. He arranged wax figures on a small stage with a light source to test compositions before committing, and the results have that quality of considered arrangement, sometimes at the cost of warmth.

He spent nearly his whole career in Rome, painting for a small circle of learned collectors rather than for churches or courts. Subjects came from Ovid, Tacitus, scripture and Stoic philosophy, and he expected viewers to follow the references.

A reluctant two years serving Louis XIII in Paris confirmed his preference for Rome and independence. The late landscapes, with their small figures dwarfed by trees and storm light, drop some of the earlier rigidity. French academic painting spent the next two centuries arguing about him, which is a measure of how much weight the work carried.