construction of the forms and the immensely satisfying balance of the motifs in the natural setting are some of the missing pieces that show the true nature of Poussin’s mastery of the landscape medium. There is still the sensation, as in some of the Flights in Egypt that the setting is built around a model stage set, which gives all the right proportions to the scenery, the coulisses and the recession through the centre, but it is a language in which the fluency of landscape is as free as in the landscape drawings from nature, which include many of the group the great drawings collector P-J. Mariette (1694-1744) had in an album and are now listed as “Group G’ ever since John Shearman had difficulty integrating this aspect of Poussin’s work with the rest of the much more tentative design style. The recent Poussin and Nature exhibition in Bilbao and new York has underlined that Poussin’s ap-
X rAY of Landscape with a lake with pentimenti marked