Artwork · 17th century · Nicolas Poussin

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Landscape with Saint John on Patmos

Nicolas Poussin1640Oil on canvas100.3 × 136.4 cm

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At a glance

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An old Saint John sits writing on the Greek island of Patmos, with his eagle beside him and broken columns and temples all around.
Nicolas Poussin, a French painter living in Rome, painted it in oil on canvas in 1640, when he was about forty-five.
Trees, hills and stones are stacked in calm layers parallel to the picture, so nature itself looks measured and arranged.

Reading the picture

4 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Find the old man in the yellow cloak at lower right. A thin golden ring floats above his curly white hair. He props a tablet on his knee and writes, while an inkpot, a quill and two loose sheets of paper lie at his feet. Christian tradition calls John the youngest of the twelve disciples, yet Poussin gives him a gray beard.
Look into the shadow just to John's right. A brown eagle stands there with its head raised. The eagle is John's sign, the symbol that tells you which gospel writer this is. It is painted so close to the color of the earth that many viewers walk right past it.
Travel to the middle distance, in front of the hill. On the left a slim obelisk points at the sky. To its right, columns with leafy carved tops hold up what is left of a temple roof. The Art Institute of Chicago reads these fragments as reminders of ancient Greek and Roman civilization.
Now come back to the big stones at lower left. A square pedestal stands alone with nothing on top. In front of it lie a fallen column drum and cracked blocks, with grass pushing up between them. Where a grand building once stood, one old man is quietly writing.

When it was painted

In 1640 Nicolas Poussin was about forty-five and very much a Roman. Born in Normandy, he had moved to Rome around the age of thirty, in 1624, and had lived there for more than fifteen years. He made his name painting pictures of modest size for educated collectors.

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, this canvas pairs with Landscape with Saint Matthew, painted the same year and now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. The museum suggests the two may have been planned as part of a set showing all four gospel writers.

At the end of that same year, Poussin reluctantly left Rome for Paris, called there by King Louis XIII. He was named First Painter to the King, but the huge court projects and the rivalries around them wore him down. In 1642 he went back to Rome, and he never left again.

Meanwhile the picture began its own travels. It passed through the hands of the Paris dealer Alexandre-Joseph Paillet and crossed to Britain, where it appears in records of paintings sold between 1801 and 1805. Later it dropped out of sight. In 1930 the German scholar Hans Posse published it as a rediscovered Poussin, and the Art Institute bought it that same year.

Look again at the two white sheets at John's feet. Painted in the year Poussin was pulled away to Paris, they are still lying among the fallen stones, waiting for words.

The painter

Nicolas Poussin

1594–1665

When painting this, the artist was about 46 years old

All paintings by Nicolas Poussin →

More by the same painter

The Abduction of the Sabine Womenprobably 1633–34

Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun1658

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you find one thing in this picture that people made and one thing that nature made?
Why?Why do you think Poussin put Saint John small and low in the corner instead of in the middle?
What about you?John is writing a new book beside a ruined temple. Where have you seen something new being made in a place where something old has fallen away?

Same period