The Inspiration of Anacreon

Poussin had come to Rome from France in 1624 and spent his first years there teaching himself from two sources at once, the antique marbles of the city and the warm mythologies Titian had painted a century earlier, several of which then hung in Roman palaces. This small picture grows out of that self-schooling, around 1628. Its subject is Anacreon, the ancient Greek poet of wine and love, shown receiving his inspiration in a golden classical calm. The colour is frankly borrowed from Venice and the poses are studied from sculpture. It belongs to the handful of tender, Titian-warmed mythologies Poussin made in those early Roman years, about the time he won his first great public commission, an altarpiece of Saint Erasmus for Saint Peter's.