The Triumph of Flora

Poussin painted The Triumph of Flora around 1627, one of his most sensuous and joyful early mythological compositions depicting the goddess of flowers and spring in a triumphal procession. The figures — transformed mortals who became flowers according to Ovid — dance and scatter blooms in a composition that celebrates the physical pleasures of natural beauty within a classical mythological framework. The warm, Venetian-inflected coloring of this early work shows Poussin before his mature palette achieved the cooler, more archaeological quality of his later mythologies. The painting demonstrates the full range of his early Roman style: classical in its figure organization, Venetian in its coloring, and possessed of a delight in the erotic and sensuous content of Ovidian myth that his later work would increasingly restrain.

The processional composition moves across the canvas in a rhythmic arrangement of richly colored figures, with the warm golden light and lush vegetation reflecting Poussin's early, more sensuous Venetian-influenced manner.