The Death of Germanicus

Nicolas Poussin was a French painter making his name in Rome when, around 1626, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of the reigning pope, asked him for this picture. Poussin turned to the Roman historian Tacitus and chose the deathbed of Germanicus, a popular young general widely believed to have been poisoned on the emperor's orders. He lays the dying man out like a fallen hero while his officers, on the left, raise their hands and swear revenge, and his family grieves on the right. He was paid 60 crowns for it in 1628. This clear, stage-like arrangement of grief would be copied by painters for the next 200 years. It now belongs to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.