Landscape with Travellers Resting

Poussin made his name in Rome with scenes from the Bible, ancient history and myth, and a picture like this one, painted around 1638 or 1639, was something new for him. It is among his earliest landscapes, and it tells no particular story. A track leads in between two outcrops of rock and trees, round a clear pool and away toward the mountains. A traveller in classical dress rests in the foreground, a second is tying his sandal further back, and a third walks along by the water. He was still feeling his way, building the view from alternating areas of dark and light, with single leaves picked out where the sun catches them. It was probably painted for Cassiano dal Pozzo, a Roman scholar and one of his chief patrons, or for his brother. Labels on the back record that in 1739 a later dal Pozzo gave it to his daughter.