The Death of Sapphira

Around 1653, in Rome, Poussin took on one of the harshest stories in the New Testament. In the Acts of the Apostles, a couple named Ananias and Sapphira sell a field and hand the apostles only part of the money, pretending it is all. Ananias drops dead when Peter confronts him, and three hours later his wife tells the same lie and dies at Peter's feet. Poussin draws one long diagonal from Peter's pointing hand down to her body on the paving, its skin already greyish green. Follow the lines of the pavement past the stone pedestal in the middle, and they lead to a small scene of charity, a man in blue bending to help a woman and child. The historian Mickaël Szanto reads it as the key to the picture. Above the city, a fortress with two towers on a rock stands for the heavenly Jerusalem.