Poussin (1594-1665) is one of the great artists who have never gained the love of a wide public, aside from limited periods and localities. The most common quick response offered, by his admirers, as an enticing proof of his greatness, has been to cite the devotion Cézanne felt for him. Unfortunately, the aspect of Cézanne that derives from that devotion is not the impressionistic component, which people of course find easy to love, nor is it the part that reflects, perhaps involuntarily, the stress of trying to get his vision down on canvas, which has been a great if almost underground force in Cézanne’s canonization by so many twentieth-century artists. Instead it is the classical orderliness and clarified exposition which Cézanne was so concerned to try to entwine with Impressionism, as a necessary assistance to its truth. And classical order by itself, which thus seems to be what’s left for Poussin, does not have wide popular appeal. The French educational system, which was long able to assign it chauvinistic value as an achievement said to be possible only in French culture, at least gave Poussin a great deal of exposure, like Racine. The unending performances of the tatter’s tragedies at the Comedie Française have their analogue in the long rows of Poussins in the best spots in the Louvre, even if both are equally overlooked by most foreign visitors, who are not likely in most cases even to register their existence. Yet while many people in France and elsewhere