ABSTRACT
The most Classical expression of French Baroque can be found in the paintings of Nicolas Poussin, who was born in Normandy, in northern France, and who lived most of his adult life in Rome. As a result of his formal precision, Poussin has been called a "cerebral" painter, even though he used Baroque techniques to convey an enormous variety of emotional expression. In France itself, the traditional solar imagery assimilated by Philip IV into his projected image as the Planet King rose to a new level of grandeur, unprecedented in Europe, at the court of Louis XIV. Poussin's popularity in Rome soon brought him to the attention of Louis XIV's father, Louis XIII, whose interest in art was longstanding. Paul Freart de Chantelou's description of Poussin's working procedure—the artist organized his compositions by arranging models of his figures in rectangular boxes—is readily evident in the stagelike regularity of the space.
