Shop art print and framed art Le Printemps ou le Paradis terrestre by Nicolas Poussin

The Seasons is the last group of oil paintings by the French painter Nicolas Poussin. It is a cycle of four canvases, each representing a season. They were painted in Rome between 1660 and 1664 for the Duc de Richelieu, the nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu. Each painting is an elegiac landscape depicting scenes from the Old Testament and a season at the same time"; allusions to the four phases of the day, the four ages of life and the four elements have been detected. Executed when the artist was ill and suffering from hand tremors, The Seasons is a philosophical reflection on order in the natural world". The iconography evokes not only Christian themes of death and resurrection, but also pagan imagery from classical antiquity, such as John Milton's Paradise Lost (which was written at the same time as these paintings) and Virgil's Georgics. The cycle is on display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. During a storm in Paris on 9 July 2017, water dripped onto the varnish of Spring and Autumn. In contrast to their complex iconographic references, the paintings are deceptively simple. However, Poussin, a painter in his seventies, used all the experience he had acquired throughout his life in the composition of each canvas. In Springtime or Earthly Paradise, Poussin depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, next to the Tree of Knowledge. This is a scene from the Book of Genesis that takes place before original sin and the expulsion from Paradise: no snake is depicted at the moment [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the classical period. It belongs to the classicism style.

 

« Le Printemps ou le Paradis terrestre » is kept at Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.

 

Find the full description of Le Printemps ou le Paradis terrestre by Nicolas Poussin on Wikipedia.