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| | A Dance to the Music of Time by POUSSIN, Nicolas |
 | | This important compositional study, which dates from the mid-1630s, is the only known preparatory drawing for Poussin's painting called A Dance to the Music of Time, in the Wallace Collection, London. |
 | | According to Poussin's earliest biographer, Bellori, it was Rospigliosi who defined the subject (a 'moral poem'), which is an allegory about fortune and the cycle of human life, in which the dancers personify poverty, labour, wealth and pleasure. |
 | | They follow the music of Father Time, who plays a lyre, while putti toy with an hourglass and blow bubbles (both emblems of life's brevity), and the Janus figure looks to the future and the past. |
| www.wga.hu /html/p/poussin/2a/22dance1.html (250 words) |
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