Art! Art! Art! › Works

Et in Arcadia ego

Nicolas Poussin, 1638

Nicolas Poussin's Et in Arcadia ego, also known as The Arcadian Shepherds, is held by the Department of Paintings of the Louvre in Paris. Painted in 1638, it shows three shepherds and a woman gathered around a stone tomb, puzzling over the words carved on it. It is a quiet, carefully balanced picture that rewards slow looking.

Where to see it

The painting belongs to the Department of Paintings of the Louvre in Paris, and the museum's records list it in Room 825. Displays change and works are sometimes moved or lent, so check the Louvre's official website for current display status, opening hours and ticketing before you visit. The canvas measures 85 cm high and 121 cm wide, a modest size, so allow time to stand close enough to read the inscription and study the figures' gestures.

What to look for in person

The finger on the inscription

Start with the kneeling shepherd at the centre of the group. He leans toward the face of the tomb and traces the carved letters with his index finger, as if spelling them out for the first time. Follow the line of his arm and you will see how the whole composition guides your eye to the words 'Et in Arcadia ego'. Then look at his companions, who lean in or turn toward one another, so that the act of reading becomes a shared moment of discovery rather than a private one.

A figure drawn from ancient sculpture

Take a step back and look at the woman standing among the shepherds. Her figure is based on an ancient statue known as the 'Cesi Juno', and once you know this, her calm posture and the weighty fall of her drapery read almost like marble brought to life. Compare her stillness with the more active poses of the men around her. The contrast is typical of Poussin, who often looked to classical sculpture to give his figures dignity and clarity, and it helps anchor the group visually.

Wreaths, staffs and a missing skull

Look at the details that set the scene: the shepherds wear wreaths and carry staffs, and the group is placed in front of a rocky background that frames the tomb. What you will not find is a skull. Poussin painted this subject twice, and in the earlier version, now at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, a skull appears. Its absence here shifts attention away from a blunt symbol of death and toward the figures themselves and the inscription they are trying to understand.

About the painting

Et in Arcadia ego is an oil painting on canvas by the French artist Nicolas Poussin, dated 1638 in the museum's record. It is also known by the title The Arcadian Shepherds, or Les Bergers d'Arcadie in French. The canvas measures 85 by 121 cm.

The subject is a pastoral one: in the idealised countryside of Arcadia, a group of shepherds and a woman come upon a large stone tomb bearing the Latin words 'Et in Arcadia ego'. The same inscription had already appeared in an earlier painting of the theme by Guercino. Poussin returned to the subject more than once, and the Louvre picture is the second of his two versions; the first is at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. The later composition is calmer and more ordered, and it omits the skull seen in the Chatsworth painting.

How to read the inscription has long interested viewers. Poussin's biographer André Félibien understood it to mean that the person buried in the tomb had once lived in Arcadia, a reading that turns the scene into a reflection on a life now ended in a place associated with happiness.

The painting has a distinguished history of ownership. It first belonged to Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi, who later became pope. In 1685 it entered the collection of King Louis XIV of France, and it is now part of the Department of Paintings of the Louvre in Paris.

Key facts

More by Nicolas Poussin

• A Dance to the Music of Time

Sources

• Wikidata Q1140358
• Wikipedia (ja) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Wikipedia (es) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• www.louvre.fr
• contact.louvre.fr