Les Bergers d’Arcadie
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''Et in Arcadia ego'' (also known as ''Les bergers d'Arcadie'' or ''The Arcadian Shepherds'') is a 1637–38 painting by
Nicolas Poussin Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a ...
(1594–1665), the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style. It depicts a
pastoral A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
scene with idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, and a woman, possibly a shepherdess, gathered around an austere tomb that includes the Latin inscription "Et in Arcadia ego", which is translated to "Even in
Arcadia Arcadia may refer to: Places Australia * Arcadia, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney * Arcadia, Queensland * Arcadia, Victoria Greece * Arcadia (region), a region in the central Peloponnese * Arcadia (regional unit), a modern administrative un ...
, there am I"; "Also in Arcadia am I"; or "I too was in Arcadia". Poussin also painted another version of the subject in 1627 under the same title. The 1630s version is held in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, while the 1627 version is held at
Chatsworth House Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, north-east of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the House of Cavendish, Cavendish family sin ...
, England. An earlier treatment of the theme was painted by Guercino –1622, also titled '' Et in Arcadia ego''.


Inspiration

A tomb with a memorial inscription (to Daphnis) amid the idyllic settings of
Arcadia Arcadia may refer to: Places Australia * Arcadia, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney * Arcadia, Queensland * Arcadia, Victoria Greece * Arcadia (region), a region in the central Peloponnese * Arcadia (regional unit), a modern administrative un ...
is first described in Virgil's '' Eclogues'' V 42 ff. Virgil took the idealized Sicilian rustics included in the ''Idylls'' of Theocritus and set them in the primitive Greek region of Arcadia (see Eclogues
VII VII or vii may refer to: the Roman numeral 7 Art and entertainment * The Vii, a video game console * vii, leading-tone triad, see diminished triad * ''VII'' (Blitzen Trapper album) * ''VII'' (Just-Ice album) * ''VII'' (Teyana Taylor album) * ...
and X). The idea was taken up anew in the circle of Lorenzo de' Medici in the 1460s and 1470s, during the Florentine Renaissance. In his pastoral work ''Arcadia'' (1504), Jacopo Sannazaro fixed the Early Modern perception of Arcadia as a lost world of
idyll An idyll (, ; from Greek , ''eidullion'', "short poem"; occasionally spelt ''idyl'' in American English) is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the ''Idylls'' (Εἰδύλλια). U ...
ic bliss, remembered in regretful dirges. The first pictorial representation of the familiar ''memento mori'' theme, which was popularized in 16th-century Venice, now made more concrete and vivid by the inscription ET IN ARCADIA EGO, is Guercino's version, painted between 1618 and 1622. (It is held in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.) The inscription gains force from the prominent presence of a skull in the foreground, beneath which the words are carved.


1627 version

Poussin's own first version of the painting (now in
Chatsworth House Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, north-east of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the House of Cavendish, Cavendish family sin ...
) was probably commissioned as a reworking of Guercino's version. It is in a more
Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
style than the later version, and is characteristic of Poussin's early work. In the Chatsworth painting, the shepherds are discovering the half-hidden and overgrown tomb, and are reading the inscription with curious expressions. The woman, standing at the left, is posed in sexually suggestive fashion, very different from her austere counterpart in the later version, which is based on a statue from antiquity known as the ''Cesi Juno''. The later version has a far more geometric composition and the figures are much more contemplative.


Interpretation

The literal translation of "Et in Arcadia Ego" is "Even in Arcadia, there am I". Poussin's earliest biographer,
Giovanni Pietro Bellori Giovanni Pietro Bellori (15 January 1613 – 19 February 1696), also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian painter and antiquarian, but, more famously, a prominent biographer of artists of the 17th century, equiva ...
, understood the 'I' of the phrase to refer to Death, thus making the painting a ''
memento mori ''Memento mori'' (Latin for 'remember that you ave todie'Arcadia Arcadia may refer to: Places Australia * Arcadia, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney * Arcadia, Queensland * Arcadia, Victoria Greece * Arcadia (region), a region in the central Peloponnese * Arcadia (regional unit), a modern administrative un ...
, death still exists. Another biographer, André Félibien, interpreted the 'I' to refer to the occupant of the tomb, but still took the overall meaning of the painting to be a reminder that death is present even in idyllic Arcadia. The most important difference between the two versions is that in the latter version, one of the two shepherds recognizes the shadow of his companion on the tomb and circumscribes the silhouette with his finger. According to an ancient tradition (see Pliny the Elder, '' Natural History'' XXXV 5, 15), this is the moment in which the art of painting is first discovered. Thus, the shepherd's shadow is the first image in art history. But the shadow on the tomb is also a symbol of death (in the first version symbolized by a skull on the top of the tomb). The meaning of this highly intricate composition seems to be that, from prehistory onward, the discovery of art has been the creative response of humankind to the shocking fact of mortality. Thus, death’s claim to rule even Arcadia is challenged by art (symbolized by the beautifully dressed maiden), who must insist that she was discovered in Arcadia too, and that she is the legitimate ruler everywhere, whilst death only usurps its power. The vagueness of the phrase is the subject of a famous essay by the
art historian Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
Erwin Panofsky, who suggested that, compared to Poussin's 1627 version, this second version shifted the focus from a warning about the inevitability of death to a contemplation of the past and a sense of nostalgia. In the course of this re-interpretation of his own composition by Poussin himself the meaning of the inscription changed. Notwithstanding the rules of Latin grammar, according to which ''et'' should be conjuncted with ''Arcadia'', not with ''ego'', in Panofsky’s view, the speaker now is no longer death, but the dead, who, speaking to the viewer from the tomb, reminds him that he himself once was enjoying his happy life in Arcadia. This new meaning of the second version prepared the way for the translation "Auch ich war in Arkadien (geboren)" ("I, too, was born in Arcadia") given by
Herder A herder is a pastoral worker responsible for the care and management of a herd or flock of domestic animals, usually on open pasture. It is particularly associated with nomadic or transhumant management of stock, or with common land grazing. ...
,
Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...
and Goethe. The sentence now comes out of the viewer’s mouth, which means that he, like every human being, once was born in Arcadia.


Sculpted versions

This undated, mid-eighteenth-century marble bas-relief is part of the Shepherds Monument, a garden feature at
Shugborough House Shugborough Hall is a stately home near Great Haywood, Staffordshire, England. The hall is situated on the edge of Cannock Chase, about east of Stafford and from Rugeley. The estate was owned by the Bishops of Lichfield until the dissolutio ...
, Staffordshire, England. Beneath it is the cryptic
Shugborough inscription The Shugborough Inscription is a sequence of letters – O U O S V A V V, between the letters D M on a lower plane – carved on the 18th-century Shepherd's Monument in the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, below a mirror ima ...
, as yet undeciphered. The reversed composition suggests that it was copied from an engraving, the compositions of which are commonly reversed because direct copies to the plate produce mirror images on printing. In 1832 another relief was sculpted as part of the monument marking Poussin's tomb in Rome, on which it appears beneath a bust of the artist. In the words of art historian Richard Verdi, it appears as if the shepherds are contemplating "their own author's death."Warwick, G. & Scott, K.
''Commemorating Poussin: Reception and Interpretation of the Artist''
Cambridge University Press, 1999. Cf. "Introduction: Commemorating Poussin" by Katie Scott, p. 9. "As Richard Verdi has noted, this change of context resulted in Poussin's shepherds being led to contemplate their own author's death, and invited the viewer to ponder the monument with the same solemnity and poignancy with which the shepherds brood on Death's incursion into Arcadia." * Also cf. Verdi, Richard, "Poussin's giants: from romanticism to surrealism", in this collection.


See also

*
List of paintings by Nicolas Poussin This page is a list of paintings by Nicolas Poussin (Les Andelys, Andelys, 15 June 1594 – Rome, 19 November 1665). The attributions vary notably from one art historian to another. Jacques Thuillier, one of the most restrictive, produced a list ...
* ''Et in Arcadia ego'' (Guercino)


Notes


References

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Further reading

* * * *


External links


Marc Wiesmann, "Classical Arcadia"S. Hamblett: Time, Truth & Poussin`s Arcadian Tomb
(text in Italian) * is a poetic response, as 'Summer Song No.6', by Felicia Hemans in The Court Magazine Volume IV 1834, page 25. {{Death and mortality in art Ancient Arcadia Ancient Greece in art and culture Greek mythology studies Iconography Latin mottos Paintings about death Paintings by Nicolas Poussin Paintings in the Louvre by French artists Priory of Sion hoax