The Shepherds of Arcadia (Et in Arcadia ego)
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) · c. 1638
Three shepherds and a calm woman in gold have come upon a stone tomb in an idyllic landscape. One shepherd kneels and traces the carved letters with his finger, his shadow falling across the stone; another reads over his shoulder; the third turns to the woman as if asking her what it means. The inscription is the Latin phrase ET IN ARCADIA EGO, best rendered as a statement by death itself, that even in Arcadia, the pastoral paradise where nothing bad happens, I am present. Nobody in the picture is frightened. They are thinking.
Poussin organises this as a frieze, four figures in a shallow band across the canvas, limbs echoing one another, so that the eye moves from hand to hand and back to the inscription. The colour is deliberately restrained, terracotta, blue, gold and white against grey stone and green, and the light is even and clear rather than dramatic. He had painted the theme once before, around 1627, in a version now in Chatsworth that is agitated and Venetian in mood; here he has cooled everything, a decision that defines French classicism for the next two centuries. The woman is variously read as a shepherdess, a Muse or the personification of memory.
The canvas was painted in Rome, where Poussin spent almost his whole career, and it was later acquired by Louis XIV, who kept it in his private apartments rather than in a state gallery. It came to the Louvre through the royal collections at the Revolution. The tomb and its inscription have fuelled centuries of speculation, including modern esoteric theories, none of which has any bearing on what Poussin actually painted.
Did You Know? Louis XIV liked it so much he hung it among his personal pictures at Versailles rather than in the public state rooms.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.