There are few, if any, superlatives that would overstate the astounding achievement — the lyric poetry, the rigorous classicism, the emotional richness, the refined magic — of the paintings of Nicolas Poussin. And there are few superlatives that would overstate the impact of “Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions,” a profound exhibition of more than 100 landscape paintings and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For anyone who loves painting, this show, pitch-perfect from beginning to end, is to be savored and adored.

The exhibition, organized by the Met’s Keith Christiansen and the Louvre’s Pierre Rosenberg, is beautifully balanced between rooms of paintings and rooms of plein air drawings. Its subdued green walls create a neutral atmosphere for the oils; and its walls of deep blue set off the golden glow of Poussin’s pen and ink and wash drawings. The last gallery, in which every work is a masterpiece, is up there among the greatest single rooms of paintings I have ever seen at the Metropolitan. “Poussin and Nature” is not an exhibition to go and see; one of the most sublime shows to hit New York in years, it is an exhibition in which to make an encampment.

Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), the painter-philosopher, was born in Les Andelys, on the Seine, about 25 miles from Rouen. He studied in Rouen and in Paris, where he drew from engravings after Raphael and from ancient Roman statues and reliefs. And although he worked for Louis XIII in Paris between 1640 and 1642, Rome, where he had studied and was active from 1624, became his home. In Rome, Poussin, along with his compatriot Claude Lorrain, went out into the landscape to work directly from nature, even painting among ancient ruins. Poussin received large-scale public commissions in Italy and France, including altarpieces, but he was drawn and best-suited to making small-scale works. He is rightly credited with inventing what has come to be known as French classicism, and with elevating gallery-sized easel paintings of narrative subjects to the level of history painting, or the life-size grand manner — a tradition that has continued to this day. And this exhibition makes that point loud and clear. To see these oils, most of which would comfortably fit above the mantle or your living room sofa, is to be transported into finely tuned worlds that are as sublime and monumental as any paintings in the history of art.

In an essay in the show’s catalog, Mr. Rosenberg reminds us that a canvas by Poussin “requires the viewer to devote time to it — indeed a great deal of time. Since the triumph of Impressionism,” he continues, “we have lost the habit of taking time to study paintings … It is important, then, to learn to stand before Poussin’s works for a long time, to relearn how to take one’s time — that time to which Poussin paid so much attention.” This might suggest to viewers that Old Master works demand more time and effort than Modern ones (a belief to which I do not subscribe); but it is true that the more you know, and the more time you devote, the more you will get out of any great work of art. And it is also true that Poussin’s paintings — which so fully explore Biblical, historical, literary, and mythological narratives, and which are so full of metaphor and symbolism and life — inspire numerous and layered readings. They are inexhaustible. They demand, and are well worth, every effort. And if it is Poussin’s miraculous pictures that motivate viewers to give an hour or more, if not a lifetime, to each work, all the better, for it is a habit that can serve Cézanne, Matisse, and Klee as well as Poussin.

When you think of Poussin, the pictures that may most readily come to mind are those in which classical figures are draped in colorful cloaks, engaged in the drama of a scene from the Bible or Ovid, such as the Met’s spectacular machine “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” In many of these pictures, the landscape is the setting or stage for the action. It is fully felt but takes a secondary role. This exhibition, the first of its kind, brings us the paintings in which the landscape is a protagonist, if not often the main event. Poussin created some of the most imaginative, intelligent, and rational paintings ever made. But this does not mean they were lacking in deep feeling. He meditated on his themes until they materialized in his pictures seemingly as incantations. He gave mathematical precision and architectural balance, rhythm, and harmony to the landscape — an order that transformed those landscapes into exquisitely poetic Arcadian dreams. Poussin’s pictures and subjects are heroic, yet his restrained landscapes are as calm and tender as they are forceful. They fuse the natural and the ideal, the profoundly observed and the profoundly felt, and through it all Poussin never falters; he introduces narrative subjects into the observed landscape, and he ennobles everything he touches. That is, his pictures never resort to sentimentality, oration, or fastidiousness. Every element builds to the whole. His landscapes, enlivened with light, make the classical ideal, no less than that of the sacred, as inevitable and solid as the ground we walk on.

“Poussin and Nature” begins with a self portrait in which the artist, amid a sea of canvases, stares over his shoulder at the viewer; but his eye, we realize, is not really looking at us, but at the large eye of an allegorical figure of Painting, depicted in a landscape — subjects to which he would devote much of his career. Poussin could work in as many modes and moods as he deemed necessary. On one side of a drawing sheet is a study of a palm that looks as if it had been done by Matisse or Dufy; on the other side is a landscape as if from the hand of Rembrandt. Other drawings prefigure Monet or van Gogh. Poussin’s light is Venetian — moist, tessellating, woven, translucent, and serene in some pictures; it is solidly carved and clear — as if from the hand of Raphael. In others, Poussin’s light is milky and sparkling, as if made of marble; or it is fantastical, as if from the hand of El Greco; or dark and foreboding and Caravaggioesque.

And Poussin’s landscapes are always fully integrated and participatory with the figures and narratives. Poussin can imbue each form with just the right amount of intense color — yellow, red, orange, blue, pink, salmon, green. His forms become alive and respond to one another, as if they are blushing in the heat of passion, or drained of life. Yet nothing is ever overstated or overly dramatic. His forms and figures glow from within, sometimes melting into or emerging from the landscape. “Venus (or a Nymph) Spied on by Satyrs,” in which a satyr lifts a cloth, exposing the sex and masturbatory bliss of a reclining nude, is one of the most erotic pictures ever made. Yet its eroticism is one in which the landscape and the goddess are inseparable. In her orgasmic shudder, she rises off the ground, to their gaze, as if she were a floating cloud. The satyr’s nipple burns red hot. The erotic light shines from out of her body and caresses the sky. It is as if she is the origin of nature, ecstasy, and beauty.

Poussin’s invented landscapes — in which the farthest luminous distance is fully realized, and in which ancient ruined temples, grazing sheep, lazy rivers, and Biblical or mythological narratives naturally coexist — wed geometric order, mythology, and rational thought with the mysteries of nature. In Poussin, classicism and idealism are not abstract principles; they are made living and concrete, as natural and essential as the trees and the sunlight and the clouds. Delacroix, whose emotional and vibrant shot color was inspired by that of Poussin, said it this way: “This mixture of buildings and majestic trees … leaves in the mind an impression of grandeur but also of melancholy and constitutes a separate genre for which [Poussin] had neither models nor rivals.”

Until May 11 (1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710).