The Conquest of Jerusalem by Emperor Titus

Nicolas Poussin painted this around 1635 in Rome for Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the pope's nephew and one of the great collectors of the day. The subject is ancient, the Roman army under the future emperor Titus storming Jerusalem and stripping the Second Temple in the year 70, with Poussin staging the chaos as a tight, legible crowd of soldiers and fleeing figures. What makes it more than a history piece is where it went. In 1638 or 1639 it was handed, as a gift from the pope, to Ferdinand III, the Holy Roman Emperor, whose own armies had recently sacked cities across the German lands and Italy. Nobody is quite sure whether the choice of a temple being destroyed was meant as a compliment, a warning, or both.