Resumen de Weaving together an identity in Nicolas Poussin's 'Landscape with an anchorite saint'
The writer identifies the subject matter of Nicolas Poussin's Landscape with an anchorite saint as St. Paul the Hermit. This work is one of a series of 24 large landscape paintings of anchorites in the wilderness commissioned in the 1930s by King Philip IV of Spain to decorate the Buen Retiro, the new palace for the arts on the outskirts of Madrid. There is no documentary evidence regarding the commission's subject-matter, and scholars have accepted Anthony Blunt's identification of the saint as Jerome. The writer argues, however, that the painting almost certainly does not represent Jerome but St Paul the Hermit; among other things, he notes the absence of Jerome's conventional attributes and the presence of those of Paul. He goes on to describe the work in detail and explains various aspects of the picture, concluding that Poussin was entrusted with depicting the first and perhaps most prominent hermit in the series devoted to anchorite saints.
