{"id":1348,"title":"The Death of Germanicus","medium":"Oil on canvas","classification":"Paintings","dimension":"58 1/4 × 78 in. (148 × 198.1 cm) (canvas)\r\n69 1/2 × 89 × 5 1/2 in. (176.5 × 226.1 × 14 cm) (outer frame)","object_name":"Painting","continent":"Europe","country":"France","nationality":"French","dated":"1627","room":"G313","list":"Euro-highlights-pre-1800","role":"Artist","text":"The young Roman general Germanicus has just been poisoned by his jealous adoptive father, the emperor Tiberius. On his deathbed, Germanicus asks his friends to avenge his murder and his wife to endure her sorrow bravely. A key work in Western painting, this tragic picture presents a moral lesson in stoic heroism, notably in the restraint and dignity of the mourning soldiers.\r\n\r\nThis work—Poussin’s first major history painting—became the model for countless deathbed scenes for the next two centuries. Many powerful human themes figure here: death, suffering, injustice, grief, loyalty, revenge. Poussin drew on Roman antiquity for the form as well as the subject. The composition, with figures crowded together near the front, is based on Roman sarcophagus reliefs. Poussin spent most of his life in Rome, where he developed a classical style that strongly influenced both French and Italian art.\r\n\r\nThis painting was commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Barberini. As prominent patrons of the arts, the wealthy Barberini family helped shape the artistic landscape of the time. The Death of Germanicus remained with descendants of the Barberini family until 1958, when Mia purchased it.","creditline":"The William Hood Dunwoody Fund","Catalog_Raisonne":"Rosenberg 98","accession_number":"58.28","artist":"Nicolas Poussin","life_date":"French, 1594–1665","department":"European Art","rights_type":"Public Domain","image_width":10188,"image_height":7661,"recent":0,"see_also":["33609","54884","43836","131386"],"sort_number":"58    28","image":"valid","public_access":1,"curator_approved":0,"highlights":0,"Cache_Location":"001000\\300\\40\\1348","Primary_RenditionNumber":"mia_8031119.jpg","Rights_Image_Display":"Full","list:euro-highlights-pre-1800":true,"related:audio-stops":[{"title":"Nicolas Poussin, The Death of Germanicus","_id":"1348","objectId":"1348","link":"http://audio-tours.s3.amazonaws.com/p706.mp3","number":"706","type":"audio"}],"related:artstories":[{"title":"The Death of Germanicus","_id":"1348","objectId":"1348","description":"<p>The ailing Germanicus—born Nero Claudius Drusus—earned his honorary name as a tenacious Roman general, famed for his brutally successful campaigns in the early first century against the tribes of Germania. He inspired such loyalty among his troops and the citizens of Rome that his adoptive father, the Emperor Tiberius, dispatched him to a distant post in Syria. The general’s mysterious death at 34 fueled suspicions that Tiberius had him poisoned and sparked grief and anger across the Roman Empire. More than 1,500 years later, French painter Nicolas Poussin sought to stir those feelings anew, framed in the stoic restraint of the classical past.</p>","link":"http://artstories.artsmia.org/#/o/1348","type":"artstory"}],"mtime":"2026-04-03T09:00:09.971Z"}