Nicolas Poussin painted this work for his longtime friend and patron Jean Pointel, who was a rich banker in Paris. Pointel also was a member of the libertines,^{[clarification needed]} a circle which Poussin himself frequented. It was in Pointel's collection, which had many works by Poussin, but was stored away after the political climate in Paris changed. In its place Poussin`s landscape with snake and dying man, was hung in Pointel`s private collection.^{[citation needed]}

Poussin places the story of Orpheus in the Campagna Romana (Roman countryside): the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Torre delle Milizie ("Tower of the Militia") figure in this painting, borrowed from the landscape of the Eternal City.^[1] Dense smoke pours from a fire which devastates the Castle, and darkens a sky already overcast with sombre clouds. The fall of the light divides the landscape diagonally into bright and dark areas – a division clearly seen on the Torre delle Milizie.^[2]

Many of Poussin's pictures have darkened, mainly as a result of a red underpainting which has begun to show through the colours. The Orpheus, however, is free of this: it has kept its original transparency even in the darker passages, and the whole painting is in a particularly fine state of preservation.^[3]

This work by Poussin remains cryptic and there are various opinions about possible ways to decipher it.

• Baer, Curtis O. (1963), "An Essay on Poussin", The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 21 (3), Blackwell Publishing: 251–261, doi:10.2307/427435, JSTOR 427435
• Bätschmann, Oskar (1999), Nicolas Poussin: Dialectics of Painting, Reaktion Books, ISBN 0-948462-43-4
• Carrier, David (1993), Poussin's paintings: a study in art-historical methodology, Penn State Press, ISBN 0-271-00816-4
• Clark, Kenneth (1961), Landscape into art, Beacon Press
• Haggard, Patrick; Rodgers, Sam (2000), "The movement disorder of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)", Movement Disorders, 15 (2): 328–334, doi:10.1002/1531-8257(200003)15:2<328::AID-MDS1021>3.0.CO;2-Y, PMID 10752587, S2CID 43216258, archived from the original on 2013-01-05
• McTighe, Sheila (1996), Nicolas Poussin's Landscape Allegories, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-48214-3
• Mérot, Alain (1990), Nicolas Poussin, Abbeville Press, ISBN 1-55859-120-6
• F. Negri Arnoldi, Storia dell'Arte, Fabbri Group (1990), Vol.III, ISBN 978-88-450-0735-4
• Scott, Katie; Warwick, Genevieve (1998), Commemorating Poussin: Reception and Interpretation of the Artist, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-64004-0
• Sohm, Philip Lindsay (2007), The artist grows old: the aging of art and artists in Italy, 1500-1800, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-12123-0, Chapter 3. Poussin's hands and Titian's eyes
• Verdi, Richard; Rosenberg, Pierre (1995), Nicolas Poussin 1584-1665, Royal Academy, ISBN 0-302-00656-7

• Orphée et Eurydice at the Louvre (in French)
• Orphée et Eurydice by Poussin, on website delapeinture.com (in French)
• Nicolas Poussin Biography, Style and Artworks
• Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• 92 works by Nicolas Poussin
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Nicolas Poussin" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.