How are you?
On every Thursday, I am
introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting Art Stories”.
The 25th story for this week is “Et
in Arcadia ego” by the French Baroque artist Nicolas Poussin.
Nicolas Poussin
“Et in
Arcadia ego”, also known as “The Arcadian Shepherds” is a painting by Nicolas
Poussin, the major painter of the Classicism and French Baroque era, completed
in 1638. It depicts a pastoral scene of shepherds gathering around a tomb and
is currently held by the Louvre.
Louvre Museum
Poussin painted two versions
of the subject under the same title. The first version painted in 1627 is now
held at Chatsworth House in England. The painter who painted this theme earlier
than Poussin was Italian painter Guercino circa 1618–1622.
Et in Arcadia ego, Guercino (c. 1618–1622)
The usual interpretation of
the title of the painting is “I” means Death and “Arcadia” means a utopian
place. Hence, it would be a memento mori, an artistic or symbolic reminder of
the inevitability of death.
During Antiquity, many Greeks lived in cities close
to the sea. However, only Arcadians who lived in the middle of the Peloponnese
lived a shepherd life because they were far from the sea. Thus, Arcadia symbolized
pure, rural and idyllic life.
But Poussin's biographer
André Félibien interpreted the phrase to mean that "the person buried in
this tomb lived in Arcadia". This means that the person also once enjoyed
the pleasures of life on earth, and this interpretation was also common in the
18th and 19th centuries.
In Arcadia's idyllic
settings, the first appearance of a tomb with a memorial inscription appears in
Virgil's Eclogues.
Virgil
The first version of Poussin's painting is believed to have
been commissioned as a rework of Guercino's version. It is much more Baroque
style than the later version, characteristic of his early work. In the first
version, the shepherds are actively reading the inscriptions on the tomb with
curious expressions, and the shepherdess on the left is dressed in a very
different style from the shepherdess in the later version.
Poussin's 1627 version of the Arcadian Shepherds, Chatsworth House
Also, for the later
version, it has a much more geometric composition than the first version, the
figures are much more contemplative, and the mask-like face of the shepherdess
follows the conventions of the Classical "Greek profile".
A sculptured version of this
painting is the mid-18th century marble relief, part of the Shepherds Monument
in the garden at Shugborough House in Staffordshire, England.
The Shugborough relief
The Shepherds Monument
The Shugborough inscription
is a sequence of letters, O U O S V A V V, written between the letters D and M
carved on the Shepherds Monument. It is one of the world's most
difficult-to-decipher ciphertexts that no one has ever deciphered
satisfactorily.
The eight letters 'OUOSVAVV', framed by the letters 'DM' in Shugborough inscription
The authors of the book
"The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" published in 1982 claimed that
Poussin was a member of the Priory of Sion and that "The Arcadian
Shepherds" he painted contained hidden meanings of esoteric significance.
Book cover of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail"
In 2003, Dan Brown copied many elements of "The Holy Blood and the Holy
Grail" in his bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code", but made no
mention of the Shugborough inscription. However, this book aroused a new
interest in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
First US edition cover of "The Da Vinci Code"
Thank you.
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