Poussin has become acquainted with other artists…

Poussin has become acquainted with other artists in Rome and tends to befriend those with classicizing artistic leanings: the French sculptor François Duquesnoy who he had lodged with in 1626; the French artist Jacques Stella; Claude Lorraine; Domenichino; Andrea Sacchi.

He has joined an informal academy of artists and patrons opposed to the current Baroque style that has formed around Joachim von Sandrart.

At this time the papacy is Rome’s foremost patron of the arts.

Poussin’s Martyrdom of St. Erasmus for St. Peter’s is Poussin’s only papal commission, secured for him by Cardinal Barberini, the papal nephew, and Poussin will not be asked again to contribute major altarpieces or paint large scale decorations for a pope.

His subsequent career will depend on private patronage.

Apart from Cardinal Francesco Barberini, his first patrons include Cardinal Aluigi Omodei, for whom he produces around 1630 to 1632 the Triumphs of Flora (Louvre), Cardinal de Richelieu, who commissions various Bacchanals; Vincenzo Giustiniani, for whom he will paint the Massacre of the Innocents (uncertain early date, Museé Condé, Chantilly); Cassiano dal Pozzo, who is to become the owner of the first series of the Seven Sacraments (late 1630s, Belvoir Castle); and Paul Fréart de Chantelou, with whom Poussin, at the call of Sublet de Noyers, will return to France in 1640.