_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1665). _See_ 39.
"The work of a really great and intellectual mind, one of the finest
landscapes that ancient art has produced"[75] (_Modern Painters_, vol.
i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 8),--its excellence consisting in the
perfect harmony of the landscape with the subject represented, and
thus marking the painter's sense of the dependence of landscape for
its greatest impressiveness on human interest. In the foreground to
the left is Phocion "the good"--the incorruptible Athenian general and
statesman, contemporary with Philip and Alexander the Great, of whom
it is recorded that he was "never elated in prosperity nor dejected in
adversity," and "never betrayed pusillanimity by a tear nor joy by a
smile." He wears an undyed robe, and is washing his feet at a public
fountain, the dress and action being thus alike emblematic of the
purity and simplicity of his life. In entire keeping with this figure
of noble simplicity is the feeling of the landscape in which "all the
air a solemn stillness holds." In detail, however, Ruskin finds the
picture deficient in truth--false, indeed, both in tone and colour (see
_ibid._, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 5).