Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion

Poussin painted Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion around 1648, the companion piece to The Funeral of Phocion, depicting Phocion's widow secretly gathering the ashes of her unjustly condemned husband — denied official burial in his own city — so that she can bring them back for proper interment. The theme of private virtue performed at personal risk, set within a serene and indifferent landscape of the Attic plain, gives this painting and its companion their sustained philosophical force. The landscape — composed around the great plain with classical temples and hills receding into hazy distance — is among the most accomplished Poussin ever created, its architecture of form and light achieving the ideal balance of human geometry and natural grandeur.

The monumental landscape composition places the small figure of the widow in the lower corner, emphasizing the indifference of the grand classical cityscape to individual human suffering.