Nicolas Milovanovic: “Poussin is an Extraordinarily Sensual Painter”

Why is the exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon? The project started with the museum's exceptional purchase of two paintings by Poussin: The Flight into Egypt in 2008 and The Death of Chione in 2016. The former was very expensive and raising the necessary money was complicated. The second was a very bold acquisition, as the painting was then accepted only by Denis Mahon, and then by Pierre Rosenberg . The museum bought these two extraordinary paintings notably because there is a part of Lyon in Poussin. In a way, he’s a Lyon artist. One of his biographers, Giovanni Battista Passeri, says he spent several years in the city. Henriette Pommier recently discovered that he was there in March and June 1622. She also found a mention of Chione in the 1691 post-mortem inventory of Silvio II Renon, grandson of Silvio I. A master silk worker who came from Italy in the 1610s, he was a passionate painter. He built a fine collection including several works by Poussin, who was about the same age as him. Following its two important acquisitions, the Lyon museum…