Autorretrato

Poussin painted this in Rome in 1649, while the France he had left behind was tearing itself apart in the civil war known as the Fronde. A few years earlier he had gone north to serve the French king, found the court unbearable, and returned to Rome for good. Here he is at 55, soberly dressed, holding a bound book lettered On light and colour. He made the portrait not for a prince but for a friend, the Paris merchant Jean Pointel, who collected his work and had asked for his likeness. It was the first time Poussin had painted himself. He would do it once more the next year, for another friend in Paris, and thought that second version the finer of the two.