Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion

Poussin painted this in Rome in 1648 for a French silk merchant, and he built it as an argument about order. The story is grim. Phocion was an Athenian general put to death on a false charge, his body denied burial and burnt on open ground outside the walls. In the foreground his widow kneels to gather his ashes in secret, while her companion glances back, sensing someone watching from the trees. Around this small illegal act Poussin lays out a serene classical city, calm buildings and measured light, the public grandeur that had condemned him carrying on undisturbed. The gap between the ordered town and the crouching figures is the whole subject. He returned to the theme in a companion picture showing the funeral that came before.