Heroines, Great Ladies

Abstract

Heroic and noble women appear mainly in Poussin’s historical and religious works. Women achieve heroic status in his Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion Collected by His Widow, and Coriolanus. What I call “great ladies” appear in Landscape with Numa Pompilius and the Nymph Egeria, and the Arcadian Shepherds (second version). Great ladies are represented in Old Testament scenes such as the Finding of Moses, Eliezer and Rebecca, and Esther Before Ahasuerus. But the Virgin Mary in his New Testament scenes most perfectly fulfills the designation “great lady,” in his Annunciation, Holy Family on the Steps, Assumption of the Virgin, the and The Seven Sacraments: Marriage (two versions).