proach Poussin and his younger contemporary
Claude rightly, the traveller will do well to free his mind from
Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme
masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of
Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn
application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at
Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at
length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission to
paint two pictures, now at Vienna, for Cardinal Barbarini, established
his reputation. Two of his works executed about 1630 during this first
Roman period hang here; 709 and 710, R. wall, The Rain of Manna, and,
The Philistines smitten by Plague. In 1640, after two years'
negotiations and the personal intervention of Louis XIII., he was
persuaded to return to Paris to take part in the decoration of the
Louvre; but in spite of his generous pay and of the fine _palazzetto_
and charming garden allotted to him for residence, the petty
jealousies, chicanery and low standard of his rivals, revolted his
artistic conscience: he obtained leave to return to Rome "to fetch his
wife," and never left the eternal city again. Two of his works painted
during this second and last Roman period are 717 (L. of entrance),
Institution of the Eucharist, and 735 (L. wall), a ceiling composition
executed for Richelieu, Time rescuing Truth from the assaults of Envy
and Discord, whose subjective interest is obvious; 704, L. of
entrance, Rebecca at the Well, is described at great length by
Felibien, who saw it in progress. It was painted (1648) for a rich
patron who desired a composition treated like Guido's Virgin, and
filled with several young girls of differing types of beauty. The
finished picture so delighted amateurs at Paris that large sums were
offered in vain to divert it from the fortunate possessor; 711, L.
wall, is the famous Judgment of Solomon (1649). On the same wall are
731, Echo and Narcissus; 734, his masterpiece, Shepherds of Arcady--a
group of shepherds of the Vale of Tempe in the heyday of health and
beauty, are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning
inscription on a tomb: _Et in arcadia ego_ (I, too, once lived in
Arcady); 736-739, The Four Seasons were painted (1660-1664) for
Richelieu. These beautiful compositions, more especially the last, The
Deluge, typifying winter, will repay careful study. On the R. wall
are,