La Continence de Scipion

Poussin painted this in 1640, the year Cardinal Richelieu finally lured him from Rome back to Paris to work for the French king, a move Poussin dreaded and soon fled. The story is a model of self-control. After capturing the Spanish city of New Carthage, the young Roman general Scipio was given a beautiful captive as a prize, learned she was already betrothed, and handed her back untouched to her fiance, along with her ransom as a wedding gift. Poussin lays it out like a ceremony, Scipio enthroned at the center and the couple before him. A Roman secretary to the pope first ordered the picture. Catherine the Great later bought it for the imperial collection, and it now hangs in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.