Object Lessons: France in the Golden Age

A concentration of French 17^th century paintings on display the loan of Nicolas Poussin’s The Holy Family Returning to Nazareth from the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Poussin’s painting has been generously sent to San Diego in exchange for the Timken’s Rembrandt, Saint Bartholomew, which is part of the major exhibition Rembrandt in America on view in Cleveland until May 28, 2012.

In honor of the loan of The Holy Family Returning to Nazareth, the Timken has arranged for it to be shown alongside four paintings by Poussin's contemporaries: the Timken's own Christ Healing the Blind (1655-60) by Philippe de Champaigne; its Pastoral Landscape (1646-47) by Claude Lorrain; the San Diego Museum of Art's Aeneas and his Father Fleeing Troy (ca. 1635) by Simon Vouet; and The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist in a Classical Landscape (ca. 1645) attributed to Nicolas or Pierre Mignard and generously lent from a private collection in San Diego.