崇拜金牛犊

Poussin painted this in Rome around 1634, a French painter who had settled in Italy and steeped himself in antique sculpture, and you can feel that here in the ring of dancers. The subject is from Exodus, the Israelites who lose patience waiting for Moses and melt their gold into an idol, a calf, and dance around it. On the far left, tiny, Moses is already coming down the mountain and beginning to smash the stone tablets in fury. Poussin arranges the dancing figures like a carved frieze, a chain of linked bodies turning in the light. The picture had a violent afternoon in 2011, when a man walked into the National Gallery in London and sprayed it with red paint. It was cleaned and is back on the wall.