Paysage avec Junon et Argus

Landscape with Juno and Argus from around 1624 at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin is among Poussin's earliest mythological landscapes, painted shortly after his arrival in Rome when he was absorbing the traditions of classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance while beginning to develop his own distinctive approach. The Ovidian myth of Juno setting the hundred-eyed giant Argus to watch over Io — and Mercury's eventual slaying of Argus — provided subject matter that combined figure painting with landscape in the classical manner that Poussin was developing. Working in Rome from 1624 onwards, Poussin learned from the example of Annibale Carracci's Farnese ceiling and the landscape paintings of Paul Bril and Domenichino, developing a vision of the classical landscape as a morally and philosophically charged environment. The Gemäldegalerie Berlin holds this among its significant collection of Poussin paintings, providing early evidence of the landscape tradition he would develop into one of the most influential in the history of European painting.

The figures are integrated into a landscape setting with Poussin's developing classical approach. The palette and spatial organization show his early engagement with the ideal landscape tradition.