Rome had a tremendous impact on the seventeenth century French artist Nicolas Poussin and through him had a tremendous effect on French art in the subsequent centuries. Poussin was heavily influenced by the classical ideals of Italian art and thrived on the lifestyle in Rome that fostered this mentality. Poussin spent over half of his life, and almost his entire productive artistic career in Rome. Despite the fact that he was a practicing artist before his time in Rome, it is said that his artistic career truly began with his arrival in the Eternal City. He served many Roman patrons but was also extremely popular with French patrons. But, he not only influenced French patrons but he also heavily impacted the future of French art. He influenced numerous French artists:

For Ingres, for instance, Poussin was a model of classical composition, surpassed only by Raphael and the Antique; Degas saw in him "purity of drawing, breadth of modeling, and grandeur of composition"; Cézanne aimed at revivifying Poussin's formal perfection by a renewed contact with nature; and the early Cubists saw in him the near-abstract qualities which they themselves sought.

Rome was the ideal place for a young artist. It provided a multitude of stylistic choices and examples. It existed in layers from antiquity to the glory of the High Renaissance to the budding appearance of the new style, Baroque. As a student of Rome, Poussin was able to explore artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Caravaggio and Bernini. He was able to glean what he could from them and synthesize his own unique style with their masterpieces as guides. Poussin had access to not only the splendors of Roman architecture and art, but also to its libraries of drawings and museums. Poussin made innumerable sketches of Roman ruins and monuments. He also made use of literary writings of antiquity to glean inspiration. It was in Rome that he finally seemed to flourish.