The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus

This was the big break, and in a way it didn't take. Around 1628 Nicolas Poussin was a Frenchman only a few years into life in Rome, still largely unknown, when the office that ran St Peter's handed him an altarpiece for the basilica, after first offering it to the more established Pietro da Cortona. His patron Cassiano dal Pozzo, secretary to a powerful cardinal, had pushed for him. The subject is grim. Saint Erasmus, an early bishop, is being disembowelled, his intestines wound out on a sailor's windlass as he still looks up. It is the only altarpiece Poussin ever signed. It also turned him away from public commissions for good, and afterward he spent his career on smaller, quieter pictures for private collectors.