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The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, ca. 1627
Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665)
Oil on canvas; 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
Bequest of Lore Heinemann, in memory of her husband, Dr. Rudolf J. Heinemann, 1996 (1997.117.6)

Painted around 1627, this tenderly poetic picture reveals a side of Poussin not otherwise represented by the Museum's splendid holdings of this greatest of all seventeenth-century French artists. During the 1620s, Poussin was especially attracted by Venetian painting, studying Titian's great mythological compositions, which were then in the Aldobrandini collection, Rome, but are now in the Prado, Madrid, and the National Gallery, London. It is from these that he took inspiration for the fruit-gathering cherubs and the landscape.

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    The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, ca. 1627
    Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665)
    Oil on canvas; 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
    Bequest of Lore Heinemann, in memory of her husband, Dr. Rudolf J. Heinemann, 1996 (1997.117.6)