Adoration of the Shepherds (Poussin)

[2] By 1637, soon after it was painted, it was owned by Cardinal Gian Carlo de' Medici (1611–1663),[3] the second son of Grand Duke Cosimo II of Tuscany and was placed in his villa outside Florence.

[9] Unlike those in the still central scene, the figures in the small background Annunciation to the Shepherds are highly agitated, with extreme and strenuous poses.

The Saving of the Infant Pyrrhus in the Louvre, with a similar unified "coppery" scheme, has now been shown to have been finished by 1634 at the latest, so the London painting is now assigned to 1633–34 with reference to these, and also a drawing with a preparatory sketch on the verso, now in the Royal Collection.

These were Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679), nephew of the current Pope, Urban VIII (reigned 1623–1644), and his secretary, the antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657), who was to remain an important friend and patron of Poussin.

That this painting quickly passed to a Medici prince-cardinal makes it rather untypical for this period, though during the 1630s awareness of Poussin's talent was growing in the French court, until he was eventually ordered by the king to return to Paris in 1640 (he escaped back to Rome two years later, and never left again).

As well as showing off the artist's skill and learning they acted as a reminder of the medieval legend, reported in the popular compilation of the Golden Legend, that on the night of Christ's birth the Basilica of Maxentius in Rome, supposed to house a statue of Romulus, had partly tumbled to the ground, leaving the impressive ruins that survive today.

[20] In Italian works the architecture of such temples became classical, reflecting the growing interest in the ancient world, and the ruins that remained in many areas.

[21] The woman with the fruit can be paralleled in some other paintings, and if the work was actually commissioned by Cardinal de' Medici, a reference to a statue of Plenty by Donatello, now lost but then prominently displayed in the Mercato Vecchio of his home-city of Florence, may have been intended.

This includes an upturned pediment stone at bottom left, a low arch in the centre at what is now about halfway up the final composition, and a lamb lying below Jesus.

Another mention, from 1700, is in the collection of André Le Nôtre (1613–1700), the landscape architect and principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France,[27] and there are two further owners of what was probably the same painting, ending in a posthumous sale in 1761.

[28] At this point it may have passed to England; in 1795 what was certainly the same painting was in the posthumous sale of Sir Joshua Reynolds' collection at Christie's,[29] where it fetched 205 guineas.