Publisher's Synopsis
Jonathan W. Unglaub, esteemed authority on the topic, shows how Poussin ingeniously employed the landscape setting and seemingly incidental figures to imbue the apparently conventional but deceptively meaningful painting with a broad sweep of sacred history. The author also considers the painting in the context of Poussin's two series of the Seven Sacraments and makes the case that the artist redefined the ambitions of narrative painting and landscape, sowing the seeds of pictorial classicism.