versus


So as it turns out... Cleveland owns the real one (which is the bottom one). The quality of the photo is absolutely horrendous. This photo does no justice whatsoever. It's way too saturated.

Poussin, a thoughtful painter would have had made changes to his composition. As it turns out the architecture to the left did not exist in the first layer and he continued to use different architectural styles until he was satisfied with this final composition. The Washington copy however, when looking at the hidden layers via x-radiography, reveals very little alterations.

In addition, the paint mixtures and layers conform to Poussin's other paintings.

Lastly, the perspective framework is consistent. The orthogonals align perfectly at the vanishing point. The Washington copy has multiple vanishing points. The copycat obviously had no idea what the heck he was doing. In the real painting, you can actually observe incised lines that were drawn in to mark the orthogonals. In addition, the vanishing point is also visibly clear and was used to hold a sharp instrument while strings were attached and stretched across the canvas to again, keep a consistent perspective.

I wish you could see all these pictures of the findings in the book.

I love how you can approach a work of art in so many different angles. =)