Nicolas Poussin, born near Normandy, France, where he began his art studies. He later went on to Paris, and painted in the Mannerist style. combined with aspects of Italian baroque. He moved to Rome in 1624 and, apart from a brief time in Paris (1640-42), remained in Italy for the rest of his life. There, he devoted himself to studying antique painting and sculpture and the works of Titian, Raphael, and Comenichino. His highly personal style, strengthened by close observation of nature developed from this. His first works included mythological subjects in rich brushwork, the colours inspired by Titian, and compositions that stress movement. Under the influence of Raphael and Domenichino, his mid-range compositions were colourful and cool, with smooth brushwork, and the effect statuesque. His final period is a more romantic one, marked by a lyrical gravity of figures and landscape settings, the compositions ordered, in almost mathematical planes. His subject matter was literary, taken almost entirely from ancient history or mythology and from the Old and New Testaments. His greatest contribution was his personal, poetic interpretation of antiquity, based upon nature. One of the most important of the seventeenth-century artists, Poussin was enormously influential in his native France. He became a source of inspiration to serious painters such as David and Cezanne.