Until the 20th century he remained a major inspiration for such classically-oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne.

Another early friend and biographer, André Félibien, reported that "He was busy without cease filling his sketchbooks with an infinite number of different figures which only his imagination could produce.

He worked for three months in the studio of the Flemish painter Ferdinand Elle, who painted almost exclusively portraits, a genre that was of little interest to Poussin.

[8] He first tried to travel to Rome in 1617 or 1618, but made it only as far as Florence, where, as his biographer Bellori reported, "as a result of some sort of accident, he returned to France.

In the summer of the same year, he received his first important commission: the Order of Jesuits requested a series of six large paintings to honor the canonization of their founder, Saint Francis Xavier.

His other major sponsor, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, was named a papal legate to Spain and also departed soon afterwards, taking Cassiano dal Pozzo with him.

Poussin became ill with syphilis, but refused to go to the hospital, where the care was extremely poor, and he was unable to paint for months.

Thanks to Cassiano dal Pozzo's influence, Poussin was chosen to paint the Saint Erasmus altarpiece, following Pietro da Cortona's original design.

With its plunging diagonal composition and high narrative drama, the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus is Poussin's most overtly "baroque" work.

[22] Despite its adherence to the pictorial idiom of the day, for unknown reasons, the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus seems to have met with official displeasure and generated no further papal commissions.

Instead, Poussin would re-orient his art towards private collectors, for whom he could work more slowly, with increasing control over subject matter and style.

[24] His house was at the foot of Trinité des Monts, near the city gate, where other foreigners and artists lived; its exact location is not known but it was opposite the church of Sant'Atanasio dei Greci.

[17] As the work of Poussin became well known in Rome, he received invitations to return to Paris for important royal commissions, proposed by Sublet de Noyers, the Superintendent of buildings for Louis XIII.

His new projects included The Institution of the Eucharist for the chapel of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and The Miracle of Saint Francis-Xavier for the altar of the church of the novitiate of the Jesuits.

In October 1643, Poussin sold the furnishings of his house in the Tuileries in Paris, and settled for the rest of his life in Rome.

In 1655 Fouquet obtained for Poussin official recognition of his earlier title as First Painter of the King, along with payment for his past French commissions.

[28] Another important French patron of Poussin in this period was Paul Fréart de Chantelou, who came to Rome in 1643 and stayed there for several months.

[31] He suffered from declining health after 1650, and was troubled by a worsening tremor in his hand, evidence of which is apparent in his late drawings.

The New Testament provided the subject of one of his most dramatic paintings, "The Massacre of the Innocents", where the general slaughter was reduced to a single brutal incident.

[36] The most famous of his religious works were the two series called The Seven Sacraments, representing the meaning of the moral laws behind each of the principal ceremonies of the church, illustrated by incidents in the life of Christ.

The first series was painted in Rome by his major early patron, Cassiano dal Pozzo, and was finished in 1642.

He also created The Birth of Venus (1635), telling the story of the Roman goddess through an elaborate composition full of dynamic figures for the French patron, Cardinal Richelieu, who had also commissioned the Bacchanals.

He also painted two versions illustrating a story of Ovid in the Metamorphoses in which Venus mourning the death of Adonis after a hunting accident, transforms his blood into the color of the anemone flower.

Throughout his career, Poussin frequently achieved what the art historian Willibald Sauerländer terms a "consonance ... between the pagan and the Christian world".

He painted scenes from the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), published in 1581, and one of the most popular books in Poussin's lifetime.

Idealized shepherds examine a tomb inscribed with the title phrase, "Even in Arcadia I exist", reminding that death was ever-present.

[42] A fertile source for Poussin was Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi, who wrote moralistic theatrical pieces which were staged at the Palace Barberini, his early patron.

In Poussin's works a survival of the impulses of the Renaissance is coupled with conscious reference to the art of classical antiquity as the standard of excellence.

[17] He also became the model for the myth of the child genius, who becomes the miserable artist rejected by society, as can be seen in Francois-Marius Granet's painting of the death of Poussin.

[55] In the 20th century, some art critics suggested that the analytic Cubist experiments of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were also founded upon Poussin's example.