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a stormy panorama that includes, in the foreground, the tragic lovers. Poussin described this painting in a famous letter, focusing on his desire to "represent a tempest on earth, imitating as best I could the effect of a violent wind, of air filled with darkness, with rain, with lightening flashes and thunderclaps that fall here and there, not without wreaking havoc." What has interested scholars about this letter (which we know from a transcription by an early biographer) is that it is only at the end of his description that Poussin mentions Ovid's story of Pyramus, the young man who kills himself under the mistaken belief that his lover, Thisbe, is already dead, which in turn precipitates her suicide.
This letter has suggested to some scholars that for Poussin the subject of the picture was the storm itself, with the Ovidian reference only underscoring the broader poetic idea. Close studies of the painting reveal that in this landscape, as in many others, the figures were painted last. Although this does not mean that the figures were not part of the original conception, we are again brought face to face with Poussin's central concern with naturalistic phenomena. Could it be that the classical hero of the French Academy had a romantic soul? Could it be that this artist who had been attracted early in his career to the poesie of the Venetian landscape tradition in Giorgione, Bellini, and Titian never lost his lyric drive? Certainly Poussin's drawings--which comprise a show within this show--are miracles of graphic speculation. His quickening pen strokes and boldly conceived ink washes could only be the products of a genuinely unfettered imagination.
