Nicolas Poussin arrived in Paris in 1612. He attended Georges Lallemand’s studio for an indeterminable time. In 1624, a fully matured master, Poussin moved to Rome, where due to the poet Giambattista Marino, he entered into the city’s circle of patrons and collectors and quickly won recognition in the artistic community. His clients were famous French and Italian collectors, among them Cardinals Richelieu and Barberini. In late 1640 Poussin accepted King Louis XIII’s invitation to return to Paris, where he executed a series of murals for the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. Poussin found the official atmosphere of artistic life in France stifling and he soon left France to return permanently to Rome. The last twenty years of his life were spent alone, fully devoted to art and meditation. It was in those late years that Poussin created such masterpieces of classicism as the series The Seasons. At the time of his death on November 19, 1665, his ideas and theory of classic painting had triumphed with the Academy.