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''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. ==Themes== The French born painter Nicolas Poussin had made his home in Rome since the age of 30. At the end of his life, from 1660 to 1664, he undertook his last set of paintings, The Four Seasons, a work commissioned by the Duc de Richelieu, son of Cardinal Richelieu. Work on the paintings was necessarily slow, because of general ill health and the continuing tremor in his hands, which had affected Poussin since 1640 and turned him into a recluse. The ''Seasons'' are a continuation of Poussin's mythological landscapes, depicting the power and grandeur of nature, "benign in Spring, rich in Summer, sombre yet fruitful in Autumn, and cruel in Winter." The series also represents successive times of the day: early morning for Spring, midday for Summer, evening for Autumn and a moonlit night for Winter. For both stoic philosophers and for early Christians the seasons represented the harmony of nature; but for Christians the seasons, often depicted personified surrounding the Good Shepherd, and the succession of night and day also symbolized the death and resurrection of Christ and the salvation of man (1 Clement 9: 4-18, 11: 16-20 s:1 Clement (William Wake translation)). Departing from the traditions of classical antiquity or medieval illuminations, where the seasons were represented either by allegorical figures or by scenes from everyday country life, Poussin chose to symbolize each season by a specific episode from the Old Testament. For Spring he chose Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from Genesis; for Summer Boaz discovering Ruth gleaning corn in his fields from the Book of Ruth; for Autumn the Israelite spies returning with grapes from the promised land of Canaan from the Book of Numbers; and for Winter the Flood from the Book of Noah. In addition to the obvious seasonal references, some commentators have seen further less immediate biblical references. The bread and wine in Summer and grapes in Autumn could refer to the eucharist. The whole sequence could also represent Man's path to redemption: his state of innocence before the original sin and the Fall in Spring; the union that gave rise to the birth of Christ through the House of David in Summer; the Mosaic laws in Autumn; and finally the Last Judgement in Winter. As well as this Christian iconography, the paintings could also contain mythological allusions to four deities of classical antiquity.〔 In Spring, Poussin reuses the device of a rising sun, previously employed in the ''Birth of Bacchus'' to denote Apollo, the father of Bacchus. In Summer Ruth with her sheaf of corn could denote Ceres, the goddess of grain and fertility. In Autumn the grapes could be a reference to Bacchus. The serpent is a symbol used in Poussin's previous oeuvre. In Winter the snake slithering over the rocks could be an allegorical reference to the classical underworld and Pluto. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Four Seasons (Poussin)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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