All through his life, Nicolas Poussin absorbed a great deal from the works of Raphael, the artist who understood antiquities the best. Working in close and sustained conversation with Raphael's works, he established his own style in a medium-sized tableau format. For Poussin, Raphael was not only a beacon that enabled him to understand classical antiquity, but also an exemplary of composition, disposition of figures, proportion, gesture, and decorum of history painting. Moreover, Raphael presented an object from which to learn how to combine a great story into a medium-sized tableau. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between Poussin's work and Raphael's designs of the Acts of the Apostles tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, centering on the two Seven Sacraments series and two other works on the subject of Acts painted in the 1650s. We aim to analyze how Poussin condenses large decorative art into compositions suitable for medium-sized tableaux, and how he transforms decorations for the Papacy into meanings suitable for art lovers while drawing upon the influence of Raphael. Because the impact of these tapestries is obvious in works completed for French patrons in the latter half of Poussin's life, the reception of Raphael's tapestries in France is also examined, and we reconsider the assimilation of Raphael in Poussin's tableaux and his originality taking the physical scale of the paintings into account.
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