Landscape with St Matthew and the Angel

In 1640 Poussin was 46, had been settled in Rome for 16 years, and was being pressed hard by Louis XIII and Richelieu to come to Paris and work for the crown. He went that autumn, found the court intolerable, and was back in Rome by 1642. This landscape belongs to the last months before he left. It was painted for Gian Maria Roscioli, a private secretary to Pope Urban VIII, as one of a pair. The evangelist Matthew sits writing with the angel leaning over his shoulder, and the setting around him is the countryside outside Rome, with broken columns, a ruined tower, a bridge and a river that any visitor could ride out and find. The figures take up very little of it. The companion picture, showing Saint John on Patmos, was separated from this one long ago and hangs today in Chicago.