<P> The Four Seasons (fr Les Quatre Saisons) was the last set of four oil paintings completed by the French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594--1665). The set was painted in Rome between 1660 and 1664 for the Duc de Richelieu, the nephew of Cardinal Richelieu . Each painting is an elegiac landscape with Old Testament figures conveying the different seasons and times of the day . Executed when the artist was in failing health suffering from a tremor in his hands, the Seasons are a philosophical reflection on order in the natural world . The iconography evokes not only the Christian themes of death and resurrection but also the pagan imagery of classical antiquity: the poetic worlds of Milton's Paradise Lost and Virgil's Georgics . The paintings currently hang in a room on their own in the Louvre in Paris . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> "</Td> <Td> By his absolute humility, by his effacement of himself, by his refusal to use any tricks or overstate himself, Poussin has succeeded in identifying himself with nature, conceived as a manifestation of the divine reason . The Seasons are among the supreme examples of pantheistic landscape painting . </Td> <Td>" </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="3">--Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin </Td> </Tr> </Table>

Artist of autumn from the four seasons series