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How did Nicolas Poussin portray the story of Phocion in his landscape paintings?
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Nicolas Poussin
Adoration of the Golden Calf, oil on canvas by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1634. 153.4 × 211.8 cm.
In his landscape paintings, Nicolas Poussin utilized the story of Phocion to elevate the genre of landscape, which was traditionally considered "inferior," to the level of his most exalted history paintings.1
Specifically, Poussin created pendant compositions illustrating the story of the ancient Athenian statesman. In the first of these works, he depicted the body of Phocion being carried out of Athens, setting the scene within a landscape of unparalleled grandeur and majesty. These paintings are characteristic of his 1648 series, in which he combined an intensely idealized view of nature with architecture, contrasting the irregular forms of the natural world with the geometrically perfected shapes of human creation.1