What was the first name of the French artist Poussin (1594-1665)?
The Four Seasons (Poussin) The Four Seasons (Poussin) The Four Seasons ("fr" Les Quatre Saisons) was the last set of four oil paintings completed by the French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). The set was painted in Rome between 1660 and 1664 for the Duc de Richelieu, the nephew of Cardinal Richelieu. Each painting is an elegiac landscape with Old Testament figures conveying the different seasons and times of the day. Executed when the artist was in failing health suffering from a tremor in his hands, the "Seasons" are a philosophical reflection on order in the natural world. The iconography evokes not only the Christian
Adoration of the Shepherds (Poussin) 1663, after which it may have moved to France, where a "Nativity" attributed to Poussin is recorded in a number of collections for the next century. These include that of Louis II Phélypeaux (1643–1727), better known as the chancellor de Pontchartrain, an important French politician. Gian Lorenzo Bernini noted seeing such a painting in his collection in 1665, and one is recorded in his wife's collection in 1672. 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, and there are two further owners of