Death of Germanicus

"The success of Poussin’s relatively modest early works for Francesco Barberini had meanwhile led to a further commission, for the large-scale Death of Germanicus. This, Poussin’s first epic masterpiece, was delivered in January 1628. It is a heroic deathbed scene with a gravity, emotional intensity and artistic vigour that eclipses all the artist’s early Roman poesie. Its clear design, with the emphatic gestures of the mourners inspired by antique low reliefs of the Death of Meleager, and the controlled but expressive use of an enclosed interior space for the dramatic action, marks a decisive stylistic advance from the battle paintings, with their crowded composition, ambiguous perspective, rhetorical gestures and exaggerated chiaroscuro. Yet, notwithstanding its dignified classical restraint, the Death of Germanicus also reflects, from a strictly formal and stylistic point of view, the contemporary Baroque idiom, with overlapping figures and an absence of clearly defined forms. "full vie