| Et in Arcadia ego | |
|---|---|
| Les Bergers d'Arcadie | |
.jpg) | |
| Artist | Nicolas Poussin |
| Year | 1637–1638 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 85 cm × 121 cm (34.25 in × 47.24 in) |
| Location | Musée du Louvre,Paris |
Et in Arcadia ego (also known asLes bergers d'Arcadie orThe Arcadian Shepherds)[1] is a 1637–38painting by Classical painterNicolas Poussin. It depicts apastoral scene with idealizedshepherds fromclassical antiquity, and a woman, possibly a shepherdess, gathered around an austeretomb that includes the Latin inscription "Et in Arcadia ego", which is translated to "Even inArcadia, 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 theMusée du Louvre, Paris, while the 1627 version is held atChatsworth House, England. An earlier treatment of the theme was painted byGuercinoc. 1618–1622, also titledEt in Arcadia ego.
 | This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Et in Arcadia ego" Poussin – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
A tomb with a memorial inscription (toDaphnis) amid the idyllic settings ofArcadia is first described inVirgil'sEcloguesV 42 ff. Virgil took the idealized Sicilian rustics included in theIdylls ofTheocritus and set them in the primitive Greek region of Arcadia (see EcloguesVII andX). The idea was taken up anew in the circle ofLorenzo de' Medici in the 1460s and 1470s, during theFlorentine Renaissance.
In his pastoral workArcadia (1504),Jacopo Sannazaro fixed the Early Modern perception of Arcadia as a lost world ofidyllic bliss, remembered in regretful dirges. The first pictorial representation of the familiarmemento mori theme, which was popularized in 16th-century Venice, now made more concrete and vivid by the inscriptionET IN ARCADIA EGO, isGuercino's version, painted between 1618 and 1622. (It is held in theGalleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.) The inscription gains force from the prominent presence of askull in the foreground, beneath which the words are carved.
| This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Et in Arcadia ego" Poussin – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Poussin's own first version of the painting (now inChatsworth House) was probably commissioned as a reworking of Guercino's version. It is in a moreBaroque 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 theCesi Juno.[2] The later version has a far more geometric composition and the figures are much more contemplative.
This undated, mid-eighteenth-century marble bas-relief is part of the Shepherds Monument, a garden feature atShugborough House, Staffordshire, England. Beneath it is the crypticShugborough inscription, as yet undeciphered.[3] The reversed composition suggests that it was copied from anengraving, 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.[4] In the words of art historian Richard Verdi, it appears as if the shepherds are contemplating "their own author's death."[5]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(August 2023) |
The literal translation of "Et in Arcadia Ego" is "Even in Arcadia, there am I". Poussin's earliest biographer,Giovanni Pietro Bellori, understood the 'I' of the phrase to refer toDeath, thus making the painting amemento mori, reminding the viewer that even in the blissful utopia ofArcadia, death still exists.[6] 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.[7]
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 (seePliny 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.[8]
The vagueness of the phrase is the subject of a famous essay by theart historianErwin 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 whichet should be conjuncted withArcadia, not withego, 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 byHerder,Schiller andGoethe. The sentence now comes out of the viewer’s mouth, which means that he, like every human being, once was born in Arcadia.[9]
Pierre Plantard, the creator of thePriory of Sion hoax, adopted"Et in Arcadia ego...", a slightly altered version of aLatin phrase that most famously appears as the title of the two paintings by Nicolas Poussin, as themotto of both his family and the Priory of Sion.[10]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
"And I Too in Arcadia!". is a poetic response, as 'Summer Song No.6', byFelicia Hemans in The Court Magazine Volume IV 1834, page 25.