Coriolan supplié par sa famille

Coriolanus Entreated by His Family from 1652 at the Musée Nicolas-Poussin in Les Andelys depicts the Roman general persuaded by his mother Veturia and wife Volumnia to spare Rome from the sack he had promised to exact with his Volscian allies. Shakespeare dramatized the same story; Poussin treated it as a philosophical meditation on the conflict between duty to the state and personal feeling — a Roman general ultimately choosing his private loyalties over his public rage. Working in Rome from 1624 onwards, Poussin served a cultivated international clientele who prized his learned, disciplined approach to classical antiquity, and the Coriolanus subject exemplified the kind of exemplary Roman virtue that he found philosophically compelling. His correspondence reveals a painter who regarded painting as philosophy made visible, and the Coriolanus story's examination of conflicting obligations gave him rich material. The Musée Nicolas-Poussin, in the Norman town where he was born, holds this as part of the collection dedicated to the region's most famous painter.

The multi-figure composition dramatizes the moral conflict through gesture and expression. Poussin's classical handling and measured palette create a scene of philosophical gravity.