Editing Nicolas Poussin (section)

=== Final years in Rome (1642–1665) ===
<gallery mode="packed" heights="200">
File:Landscape with orpheus and eurydice 1650-51.jpg|''Landscape with Orpheus and Eurydice'', 1650–51
File:Poussin, Nicolas - Paysage avec Orion aveugle cherchant le soleil - 1658.jpg|''[[Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun]]'', 1658, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]
File:Nicolas Poussin - L'Été ou Ruth et Booz.jpg|''[[The Four Seasons (Poussin)|The Four Seasons (Summer)]]'', 1660–1664, Louvre
</gallery>
When he returned to Rome in 1642, he found the art world was in transition. Pope Urban VIII died in 1644, and the new Pope, [[Innocent X]], was less interested in art patronage, and preferred Spanish over French culture. Poussin's great patrons, the [[Barberini family|Barberinis]], departed Rome for France. He still had a few important patrons in Rome, including Cassiano dal Pozzo and the future Cardinal [[Camillo Massimi]], but began to paint more frequently for the patrons he had found in Paris. Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642, and Louis XIII died in 1643, and Poussin's Paris sponsor, Sublet de Noyer, lost his position, but Richelieu's successor, [[Cardinal Mazarin]], began to collect Poussin's works. In October 1643, Poussin sold the furnishings of his house in the [[Tuileries Palace|Tuileries]] in Paris, and settled for the rest of his life in Rome.{{sfn|Rosenberg|Temperini|1994|pp=38–40}}

In 1647, [[André Félibien]], the secretary of the French Embassy in Rome, became a friend and painting student of Poussin, and published the first book devoted entirely to his work. His growing number of French patrons included the Abbé Louis Fouquet, brother of [[Nicolas Fouquet]], the celebrated [[Superintendent of Finances]] of the young [[Louis XIV]]. 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. To thank Fouquet, Poussin made designs for the baths Fouquet was constructing at his château at [[Vaux-le-Vicomte]].{{sfn|Rosenberg|Temperini|1994|p=42}}

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. He commissioned from Poussin some of his most important works, including the second series of the ''[[Seven Sacraments (Poussin)|Seven Sacraments]]'', painted between 1644 and 1648, and his ''Landscape with Diogenes''.{{sfn|Wright|1985|p=211}} In 1649 he painted the ''Vision of St Paul'' for the comic poet [[Paul Scarron]], and in 1651 the ''Holy Family'' for [[Charles III de Créquy]]. Landscapes had been a secondary feature of his early work; in his later work nature and the landscape was frequently the central element of the painting.{{sfn|Rosenberg|Temperini|1994|pp=42–45}}

He lived an austere and comfortable life, working slowly and apparently without assistants. The painter [[Charles Le Brun]] joined him in Rome for three years, and Poussin's work had a major influence on Le Brun's style. In 1647, his patrons Chantelou and Pointel requested portraits of Poussin. He responded by making two self-portraits, completed together in 1649.{{sfn|Rosenberg|Temperini|1994|pp=44–45}}

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.{{sfn|Wright|1985|p=254}} Nonetheless, in his final eight years he painted some of the most ambitious and celebrated of his works, including ''The Birth of Bacchus'', ''Orion Blinded Searching for the Sun'', ''Landscape with Hercules and Cacus'', the four paintings of ''The Seasons'' and ''Apollo in love with Daphné''.

His wife Anne-Marie died in 1664, and thereafter his own health sank rapidly. On 21 September he dictated his will, and he died in Rome on 19 November 1665 and was buried in the church of [[San Lorenzo in Lucina]].{{sfn|Rosenberg|Temperini|1994|pp=48–49}}