Editing Nicolas Poussin (section)

===Landscapes and townscapes===
<gallery mode="packed" heights="200">
File:Poussin - Paysage avec saint Jean à Patmos - Chicago Art Institute.jpg|''[[Landscape with Saint John on Patmos]]'', late 1630s, [[Art Institute of Chicago]]
File:Nicolas Poussin - Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion - Google Art Project.jpg|''[[Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion]]'', 1648, [[Walker Art Gallery]]
File:Nicolas Poussin - Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe - WGA18334.jpg|''Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe'', 1651, [[Städel Museum]]
File:Nicolas Poussin - La Mort de Saphire.jpg|''The Death of Sapphira'', 1654, Louvre
</gallery>
Poussin is an important figure in the development of [[Landscape art|landscape]] painting. In his early paintings the landscape usually forms a graceful background for a group of figures, but later the landscape played a larger and larger role and dominated the figures, illustrating stories, usually tragic, taken from the Bible, mythology, ancient history or literature. His landscapes were very carefully composed, with the vertical trees and classical columns carefully balanced by the horizontal bodies of water and flat building stones, all organized to lead the eye to the often tiny figures. The foliage in his trees and bushes is very carefully painted, often showing every leaf. His skies played a particularly important part, from the blue skies and gray clouds with bright sunlit borders (a sight often called in France "a Poussin sky") to illustrate scenes of tranquility and the serenity of faith, such as the ''[[Landscape with Saint John on Patmos]]'', painted in the late 1630s before his departure for Paris; or extremely dark, turbulent and threatening, as a setting for tragic events, as in his ''Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe'' (1651). Many of his landscapes have enigmatic elements noticeable only with closer inspection; for example, in the center of the landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe, despite the storm in the sky, the surface of the lake is perfectly calm, reflecting the trees.{{Sfn|Rosenberg|Temperini|1994|pages=109–127}}

Between 1650 and 1655, Poussin also painted a series of paintings now often called "townscapes", where classical architecture replaces trees and mountains in the background. The painting ''The Death of Saphire'' uses this setting to illustrate two stories simultaneously; in the foreground, the wife of a wealthy merchant dies after being chastised by St. Peter for not giving more money to the poor; while in the background another man, more generous, gives alms to a beggar.{{Sfn|Rosenberg|Temperini|1994|pages=109–127}}