Landscapes with two nymphs and a snake

Localisation : The Gallery of Painting
Année de création :Late 1650s
Artiste :Nicolas Poussin

Description

Here Poussin paints a typically Roman landscape, in the vein of the genre initiated in the early 17th century in Rome, particularly in Annibale Carracci’s entourage, but also thanks to the presence of Flemish artists who are increasingly numerous in the city. The landscape becomes almost autonomous in the composition, no longer serving as a simple setting for the subject. In this painting the French artist gives it imposing dimensions. Under the guise of a mythological subject justified by the presence of the characters, it is the landscape that dominates. The latter is highly constructed: although its aspect evokes the Lazio countryside, its layout owes little to reality. The mythological subject chosen by Poussin remains, as often, enigmatic: do the nymphs represent rivers where the snake would also have aquatic symbolism, or should they be interpreted as dichotomies? Although landscape painting was mainly a means to make a living on his arrival in Rome, he seems to have returned to it with particular enthusiasm at the end of his life, going beyond the early 17th century Roman model to give it a new dimension.