Poussin arrived in Rome in early 1624 on the recommendation of the poet Giambattista Marino, who introduced him first to Cardinal Francesco Barberini's circle and, through that connection, to Cassiano dal Pozzo, secretary to the cardinal^[2]. Dal Pozzo became Poussin's most consistent Roman patron over the following two decades, eventually owning more than fifty of his paintings, and Poussin himself later said he had received his real training from dal Pozzo's household and his Museo Cartaceo, an encyclopaedic collection of drawings after antique art and natural history^[2][3]. The Inspiration of the Poet belongs to a small group of poetical-allegorical subjects, including the Parnassus and Bacchus-Apollo, that Poussin painted specifically for the literary and antiquarian circle around Marino and dal Pozzo, standing apart from the more conventional religious and historical subjects he painted for other Roman patrons at the same time^[4].

The painting's blond, light-bathed colouring, the white of Calliope's robe, and the golden yellow and deep blue of the poet's drapery place it stylistically close to two other paintings from the same years, the Saint Catherine and the Saint Erasmus, sharing their debt to Venetian colour^[4]. Poussin drew directly on Titian for the modelling of heads and the use of reflected light, a manner he would have studied firsthand in Titian's Bacchanals and in the Sacred and Profane Love; the shading of Calliope's profile and the drawing of her ear and eyebrow both echo devices Poussin took from Titian^[4]. The colour owes more to Veronese in places, particularly in the leaf patterns set against the sky, while the pose of Apollo himself is taken from Raphael's ceiling in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican^[4].

Few paintings in Poussin's early career have had their date argued over as thoroughly as this one. Stylistic comparison places it between the Saint Catherine and the Saint Erasmus rather than in either an earlier or later phase some scholars have proposed, based on matching details of colour, drapery handling and compositional structure across the three works^[4]. The painting's geometric structure, two vertical figures flanking a broad central mass linked by a horizontal movement, in this case Apollo's outstretched arm, develops a compositional device Poussin had already tried in his earlier Flight into Egypt, suggesting continuity in his working method even as his subject matter shifted toward classical mythology and poetic allegory^[4].