Aster amellus Aster amellus Aster amellus, the European Michaelmas-daisy, is a perennial herbaceous plant of the genus "Aster", belonging to the Asteraceae family. In the language of flowers, the Michaelmas-daisy symbolizes a farewell or a departure. The genus name ("Aster") comes from the Greek and means "star-shaped flower." The specific name ("amellus") is first used in the Georgics (Book IV, 271-280), a poem of the Latin poet Publius Vergilius Maro (70 BC - 19 BC), but the etymology is obscure and uncertain. "Aster amellus" reaches on average a height of . The stem is erect and branched, the leaves are dark green.
The Inspiration of the Poet is writing under his inspiration. It is not known to what the painting alludes, nor what is its exact subject: perhaps the latter was always indefinite, because the picture appears in Mazarin's inventory of 1653 as "Apollo with a Muse and a Poet crowned with Laurels". Its warm colouring reveals the Titianesque strain in Poussin's work; it must have been painted during his first Roman period, at the end of the 1620s. Several other paintings of this period are related to this work: "", the "", and the book frontispiece drawn by Poussin and engraved by Claude Mellan for an