In his fifth discourse, Sir Joshua Reynolds argued that no 'works of any modern has so much the air of Antique Painting as those of Poussin'. The painter, Reynolds notes, 'studied the ancients so much, that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way, and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they would use on every occasion' ( Reynolds, Discourses, p.87):
The favourite subjects of Poussin were Ancient Fables; and no painter was ever better qualified to paint such subjects, not only from his being eminently skilled in the knowledge of the ceremonies, customs and habits of the Ancients, but from his being so well acquainted with the different characters which those who invented them gave to their allegorical figures... Poussin seemed to think that the style and the language in which such stories are told, is not the worse for preserving some relish of the old way of painting, which seemed to give a general uniformity to the whole, so that the mind was thrown back into antiquity not only by the subject, but the execution. ( Reynolds, Discourses, pp.87-8)