The Funeral of Phocion

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The Funeral of Phocion
Burial of Phocion.jpg
National Museum Cardiff version of the painting
Artist Nicolas Poussin
Year1648 (1648)
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensions117.5 cm× 178 cm(46.3 in× 70 in)
Location National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff

The Funeral of Phocion is a 1648 landscape painting, also known as The Burial of Phocion, Landscape with the Funeral of Phocion and Landscape with the Body of Phocion Carried out of Athens, by the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Phocion was an Athenian statesman from the 4th century BC.

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Three versions of the painting are known. These are now housed in The Louvre, Paris; National Museum Cardiff and the collections of the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, United States. [1]

In the same year Poussin painted a companion piece to The Funeral of Phocion, Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion .

According to environmental historian J. Donald Hughes (1932–2019), the landscape of Attica portrayed in this painting, with lots of trees and humans living in apparent harmony with nature, might be somewhat realistic. [2] "Poussin spent most of his working life in Rome and knew the Mediterranean landscape well, if not Greece." [2] In this regard, he differed from some other western European artists, who rarely or never visited the Mediterranean, and "when portraying classical themes presented only idealized settings based on the more northerly landscapes they knew." [3]

See also

References

  1. "The Philip Johnson Glass House announces the conservation of the Nicolas Poussin painting the single most important work in the collection" (PDF). The Philip Johnson Glass House. Retrieved 15 September 2008.
  2. 1 2 Hughes 2011, p. 44.
  3. Hughes 2011, pp. 44–45.

Further reading