Editing Nicolas Poussin (section)

==Style and method==
<gallery mode="packed" heights="200px">
File:Bacchanale - Poussin - musée du Prado.jpg|''Bacchanale'' or ''Bacchus and Ariadne'', 1624–1625, [[Prado Museum]]
File:Le Triomphe de David 1630 Madrid, musée du Prado.jpg|''The Triumph of David'', {{circa|1630}}, Prado Museum
File:Nicolas Poussin - Le Printemps.jpg|''[[The Four Seasons (Poussin)|The Four Seasons (Spring)]]'', {{circa|1664}}, [[Louvre]]
File:Nicolas Poussin - Triumph of Pan - Google Art Project.jpg|''Triumph of Pan'', {{circa|1635}}, Pen and ink with wash, over black chalk and stylus, [[Royal Collection]]
</gallery>

Throughout his life Poussin stood apart from the popular tendency toward the decorative in French art of his time. 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. Rejecting the emotionalism of Baroque artists such as [[Gian Lorenzo Bernini|Bernini]] and [[Pietro da Cortona]], he emphasized the cerebral.{{sfn|Wright|1985|pp=49–50}} His goal was clarity of expression achieved by ''disegno'' or 'nobility of design' in preference to ''colore'' or color.{{sfn|Pace}}

During the late 1620s and 1630s, he experimented and formulated his own style. He studied the Antique as well as works such as [[Titian]]'s [[Bacchanal]]s (''[[The Bacchanal of the Andrians]]'', ''[[Bacchus and Ariadne]]'', and ''[[The Worship of Venus]]'') at the [[Casino di Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi|Casino Ludovisi]] and the paintings of [[Domenichino]] and [[Guido Reni]].{{sfn|Blunt|1958|pp=54–59}}

In contrast to the warm and atmospheric style of his early paintings, Poussin by the 1630s developed a cooler palette, a drier touch, and a more stage-like presentation of figures dispersed within a well defined space.<ref name="Brigstocke" /> In ''The Triumph of David'' ({{circa|1633}}–34; [[Dulwich Picture Gallery]]), the figures enacting the scene are arranged in rows that, like the architectural facade that serves as the background, are parallel to the picture plane.<ref name="Brigstocke" /> The violence of ''The Rape of the Sabine Women'' ({{circa|1638}}; Louvre) has the same abstract, choreographed quality seen in ''[[A Dance to the Music of Time (painting)|A Dance to the Music of Time]]'' (1639–40).<ref name="Brigstocke" />

Contrary to the standard studio practice of his time, Poussin did not make detailed figure drawings as preparation for painting, and he seems not to have used assistants in the execution of his paintings.<ref name="Brigstocke" /> He produced few drawings as independent works, aside from the series of drawings illustrating Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' he made early in his career. His drawings, typically in pen and [[ink wash]], include landscapes drawn from nature to be used as references for painting, and composition studies in which he blocked in his figures and their settings. To aid him in formulating his compositions he made miniature wax figures and arranged them in a box that was open on one side like a theatre stage, to serve as models for his composition sketches.{{sfn|Wright|1985|p=68}} [[Pierre Rosenberg]] described Poussin as "not a brilliant, elegant, or seductive draughtsman. Far from it. His lack of virtuosity is, however, compensated for by uncompromising rigour: there is never an irrelevant mark or a superfluous line."<ref>Rosenberg, Pierre. "Poussin Drawings from British Collections. Oxford". ''The Burlington Magazine'', vol. 133, no. 1056, 1991, pp. 210–213.</ref>