Christ Healing the Blind

The painting, which was executed for a silk and brocade manufacturer from Lyons, formed the subject of a lecture at the Academic Royale in Paris in 1668, when the painter Sebastien Bourdon argued that Poussin had here treated the essential aspects of painting — light, composition, proportion, colour and harmony — in an exemplary manner and had fused them into a perfect whole, and concluded that Poussin’s art should be considered the supreme example for all artists.