Landscape with Travellers Resting

This picture, like another of Poussin's landscapes in the Collection 'Landscape with a Man scooping Water from a Stream', was probably executed for Cassiano dal Pozzo, a friend and patron of Poussin, or for Cassiano's younger brother, Carlo Antonio. Although they look well as a pair, and have always been together in the same collections, they were probably not made as pendants (to be hung together) and were possibly executed a year or two apart.

Campagna is Italian for countryside and refers to the district around Rome. In contrast to much of Poussin's work, the pictures do not seem to be taken from any literary or religious sources. They are lucidly composed studies based on the countryside around Rome, where Poussin is known to have drawn landscape studies.