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Et in Arcadia ego

Nicolas Poussin, 1637–1638

oil on canvas

185 × 121 cm, 72.8 × 47.6 inches

Musée du Louvre

"Et in Arcadia ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). They are pastoral paintings depicting idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, clustering around an austere tomb. The more famous second version of the subject, measuring 122 by 85 centimetres (72.8 x 47.6 in), is in the Louvre, Paris, and also goes under the name "Les bergers d'Arcadie" ("The Arcadian Shepherds"). It has been highly influential in the history of art and more recently has been associated with the pseudohistory of the Priory of Sion popularised in the books Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code. Starting in January 2007, this painting will be on temporary display at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the Louvre Atlanta exhibition. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2536x1948, 471 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Louvre Arcadia Nicolas Poussin Priory of Sion The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail Henry Lincoln French art... Events February 3 - Tulipmania collapses in Netherlands by government order February 15 - Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor December 17 - Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan Pierre de Fermat makes a marginal claim to have proof of what would become known as Fermats last theorem. ... Events March 29 - Swedish colonists establish first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden. ... This page lists direct English translations of common Latin phrases, such as veni vidi vici and et cetera. ... Les Bergers d’Arcadie, set in Ancient Greece. ... Events February 27 - Henry IV is crowned King of France at Rheims. ... 1665 (MDCLXV) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ... Titians The Pastoral Concert Pastoral refers to the lifestyle of shepherds and pastoralists, moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability of water and feed. ... In a draw in a mountainous region, a shepherd guides a flock of about 20 sheep amidst scrub and olive trees. ... Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, which begins roughly with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD... A tomb is a small building (or vault) for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. ... Mid-19th century tool for converting between different standards of the inch An inch is an Imperial and U.S. customary unit of length. ... The Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre) in Paris, France, is one of the largest, oldest, most important and famous art galleries and museums in the world. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country France Région ÃŽle-de-France Département Paris (75) Subdivisions 20 arrondissements Mayor Bertrand Delanoë  (PS) (since 2001) City Statistics Land... Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. ... Prieuré de Sion, usually rendered in English translation as Priory of Sion or even Priory of Zion, is an elusive protagonist in many works of both non-fiction and fiction. ... Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a controversial New York Times bestselling book by authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which was published in 1982 by Dell (ISBN 055212138) in London. ... This article is about the novel. ... High Museum, Atlanta. ...

Origin

The phrase is a memento mori, which is usually interpreted to mean "I am also in Arcadia" or "I am even in Arcadia", as if spoken by personified Death. However, Poussin's biographer, Andre Felibien, interpreted it to mean that "the person buried in this tomb has lived in Arcadia"; in other words, that they too once enjoyed the pleasures of life on earth. The former interpretation is generally considered to be more likely. Either way, the sentiment was meant to set up an ironic contrast by casting the shadow of death over the usual idle merriment that the nymphs and swains of ancient Arcadia were thought to embody. Memento mori is a Latin phrase that may be freely translated as Remember that you are mortal, Remember you will die, or Remember your death. It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose, which is to remind people... This page is about the fictional land of Arcadia - for the real Greek region see Arcadia, or for other uses arcadia (disambiguation) Arcadia was a concept in Greek mythology or a land untouched by human civilisation, free of war and a place of outstanding natural beauty - in this way it... Death, as a skeleton carrying a scythe, visiting a dying man. ... André Félibien (May 1619 - 11 June 1695), sieur des Avaux et de Javercy was a French architect and historiographer. ... Irony is a literary or rhetorical device in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says, and what is generally understood (either at the time, or in the later context of history). ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... Swain is a traditional English surname derived ultimately from the Old German personal name Sven (Sweyn), meaning a youth, young man. ...

Guercino's 1622 version of the subject

The first appearance of a tomb with a memorial inscription (to Daphnis) amid the idyllic settings of Arcadia appears in Virgil's Eclogues V 42 ff. Virgil took the idealized Sicilian rustics that had first appeared in the Idylls of Theocritus and set them in the primitive Greek district of Arcadia (see Eclogues VII 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 idyllic bliss, remembered in regretful dirges. In the 1590s, Sir Philip Sidney circulated copies of his romance The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which soon got into print. The first pictorial representation of the familiar memento mori theme that 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 (in the Galleria Barberini, Rome), in which the inscription gains force from the prominent presence of a skull in the foreground, beneath which the words are carved. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1031x867, 126 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Guercino Et in Arcadia ego Talk:Priory of Sion/Archive 2 ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1031x867, 126 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Guercino Et in Arcadia ego Talk:Priory of Sion/Archive 2 ... The Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591—1666) known as Guercino, was born at Cento, a village not far from Bologna. ... Daphnis can also be a genus of hawk moth, and a moon of Saturn Sculpture of Pan teaching Daphnis to play the pipes; ca. ... A sculpture of Virgil, probably from the 1st century AD. For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation). ... The Eclogues is one of three major works by the Latin poet Virgil. ... Theocritus (Greek Θεόκριτος), the creator of Ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC. Little is known of him beyond what can be inferred from his writings. ... Lorenzo de Medici Lorenzo di Piero de Medici (Florence, January 1, 1449 – 9 April 1492) was an Italian statesman and ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. ... By Region: Italian Renaissance Northern Renaissance -French Renaissance -German Renaissance -English Renaissance The Renaissance was a great cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ... Jacopo Sannazaro (1458 - April 27, 1530), Italian poet of the Renaissance, was born in 1458 at Naples of a noble family, said to have been of Spanish origin, which had its seat at San Nazaro near Pavia. ... An idyll is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocrituss short pastoral poems, the Idylls. ... Philip Sidney Sir Philip Sidney (November 30, 1554 - October 17, 1586) became one of the Elizabethan Ages most prominent figures. ... The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia, also known simply as The Arcadia is by far Sir Philip Sidneys most ambitious work. ... The Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591—1666) known as Guercino (squinter), was born at Cento, a village between Bologna and Ferrara. ... , by Albrecht Dürer Skull symbolism is instinctive in human nature. ...

Poussin's 1627 version of the "Arcadian Shepherds", depicting a different tomb with the same inscription

Poussin's own first version of the painting (now in Chatsworth house) was probably commissioned as a reworking of Guercino's version. It is in a far more Baroque style than the later version, characteristic of Poussin's early work. In the Chatsworth painting the shepherds are actively discovering the half-hidden and overgrown tomb, and are reading the inscription with curious expressions. The shepherdess, standing at the left, is posed in sexually suggestive fashion, very different from her austere counterpart in the later version. The later version has a far more geometric composition and the figures are much more contemplative. The mask-like face of the shepherdess conforms to the conventions of the Classical "Greek profile". Image File history File links Poussin1627. ... Image File history File links Poussin1627. ... A view of Chatsworth from the south-west circa 1880. ... Adoration, by Peter Paul Rubens. ...

Conspiracy theories

While the phrase "et in Arcadia ego" is a nominal phrase with no finite verb, it is a perfectly acceptable construction in Latin. Pseudohistorians unaware of that aspect of Latin grammar have concluded that the sentence is incomplete, missing a verb, and speculated that it represents some esoteric message concealed in a (possibly anagrammatic) code. In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, under the false impression that "et in Arcadia ego" was not a proper Latin sentence, proposed that it is an anagram for I! Tego arcana Dei, which translates to "Begone! I keep God's secrets", suggesting that the tomb contains the remains of Jesus or another important Biblical figure. They claimed that Poussin was privy to this secret and that he depicted an actual location. The authors did not explain why the tomb depicted in the second version of the painting should contain this secret while the distinctly different one in the first version presumably does not. Ultimately, this view is dismissed by art historians. In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a phrase whose head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers. ... Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. ... An anagram (Greek ana- = back or again, and graphein = to write) is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce other words, using all the original letters exactly once. ... Jesus (8–2 BC/BCE to 29–36 AD/CE),[1] also known as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity. ... The word Bible refers to the canonical collections of fairy tales of Judaism and Christianity. ... This article is about the academic discipline of art history. ...

In their book The Tomb of God, Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, developing these ideas, have theorized that the Latin sentence misses the word "sum". They argue that the extrapolated phrase Et in Arcadia ego sum could be an anagram for Arcam Dei Tango Iesu, which would mean "I touch the tomb of God – Jesus". Their argument assumes that: An anagram (Greek ana- = back or again, and graphein = to write) is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce other words, using all the original letters exactly once. ...

• a) the Latin phrase is incomplete
• b) the extrapolation as to the missing words is correct
• c) the sentence, once completed, is intended to be an anagram
• d) Andrews and Schellenberger selected the proper anagram out of the thousands of possibilities.

Andrews and Schellenberger also claim that the tomb portrayed is one at Les Pontils, near Rennes-le-Château^[1]. However, Franck Marie in 1974 and Michel Vallet (aka "Pierre Jarnac") in 1985 had already concluded that this tomb was begun in 1903 by the owner of the land, Jean Galibert, who buried his wife and grandmother there in a simple grave. Their bodies were exhumed and reinterred elsewhere after the land was sold to Louis Lawrence, an American from Connecticut who had emigrated to the area. He buried his mother and grandmother in the grave and built the stone sepulchre. Marie and Vallet had both interviewed Adrien Bourrel, Lawrence's son, who witnessed the construction of the sepulchre in 1933 when a young boy. Pierre Plantard, the creator of the Priory of Sion mythology, tried to argue that the sepulchre at Les Pontils was a "prototype" for Poussin's painting, but it was situated directly opposite a farmhouse (behind the foliage) and was not in the "middle of nowhere" in the French countryside, as is commonly assumed. The sepulchre has since been demolished. The neutrality of this article is disputed. ... Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (born March 18, 1920, died February 3, 2000) was the principal figure associated with the known history of the Priory of Sion, and is widely believed to have been the main creator of many of the claims about the Priorys supposed past history that later...

The Shugborough relief, adapted from Poussin's second version of the subject

Further conspiracy theories concerning the image have been fueled by a reversed copy of Poussin's second version sculpted, around 1760, in relief at Shugborough House in Staffordshire, England, beneath which is a mysterious inscription in a series of separate letters which imply an encoded message, as yet undeciphered. The reversed composition may mean 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. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (640x876, 101 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Et in Arcadia ego Shugborough House inscription ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (640x876, 101 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Et in Arcadia ego Shugborough House inscription ... Shugborough Hall is the ancestral home of Lord Lichfield and is situated near Stafford on the north eastern edge of Cannock Chase. ... Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England has in its grounds an 18th-century monument commissioned by Admiral George Anson, 1st Baron Anson, bearing an inscription that is thought to be an uncracked ciphertext. ... Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. ...

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 the art historian Richard Verdi, it appears as if the shepherds are contemplating "their own author's death."^[2]

Other uses

• Evelyn Waugh used the phrase as the title of the first act of his novel Brideshead Revisited.
• It is the title of the second major story arc of Grant Morrison's esoteric comic-book series The Invisibles, which incorporates Poussin's painting.
• It appears as an inscription on Judge Holden's rifle in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian.
• The painting has been referenced by the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay.
• The poet Goethe used a literal German translation (also without the verb "to be") — "Auch ich in Arkadien" — in reminiscing about a formative trip to Italy in his youth.
• The painting is cited as the inspiration for Nick Rhodes choosing the name "Arcadia" for a short-lived but significant musical group in the mid 1980s.
• The TV series "Millennium" (1996-1999) was famous for its arcane and mysterious titles, and a second-season episode is titled "In Arcadia Ego".
• Tom Stoppard's 1993 play Arcadia takes its name from this phrase. A character in the play mistranslates the Latin into English.
• In Louis de Bernières' 1990 novel The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (p. 367), we are told Father Garcia will one day carve this "famous phrase" at the base of an obelisk in Cochadebajo de los Gatos.
• The phrase appears on a T-shirt used by the band ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, related to their EP "The Secret of Elena's Tomb"
• The painting is an important object in the 1999 Sierra Online game Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, with the characters finding important clues in the picture.
• Some Tool concert tickets from early 1997 were printed with the phrase

Evelyn Waugh, as photographed in 1940 by Carl Van Vechten Arthur Evelyn St. ... Brideshead Revisited, the Sacred and Profane Memories of Capt. ... Grant Morrison (born January 31, 1960, Glasgow) is a Scottish comic book writer and artist. ... Cover to The Invisibles (v2) #1. ... Judge Holden is purportedly an historically accurate person, a killer who partnered with John Joel Glanton as a professional scalphunter in the mid 1800s. ... For the musician Cormac McCarthy, see Cormac McCarthy (musician). ... Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West is a novel by Cormac McCarthy, published in 1985. ... Ian Hamilton Finlay, Star. ... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced [gø tə]) (August 28, 1749–March 22, 1832) was a German writer, politician, humanist, scientist, and philosopher. ... Nick Rhodes in 1981. ... Arcadia (Nick Rhodes & Simon Le Bon). ... Millennium is a grim, suspenseful television series, produced by the creator of The X-Files and set during the run-up to the new millennium. ... Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE (born Tomáš Straussler on 3 July 1937) is a British playwright. ... Arcadia is a play by Tom Stoppard which first opened at the Royal National Theatre in London on 13 April 1993 and has played at many theatres since. ... Louis de Bernières (born London, UK on December 8, 1954) is a British novelist. ... The War of Don Emmanuels Nether Parts is a novel by Louis de Bernières, first published in 1990. ... T-Shirt A T-shirt (or tee shirt) is a shirt with short or long sleeves, a round neck, put on over the head, without pockets. ... …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is an indie rock band best known for their heavy yet anthemic music and their tendency to destroy their equipment at the end of their performances (a rock and roll tradition usually associated with The Who). ... The Secret of Elenas Tomb is the EP followup to Source Tags & Codes by Austin, TX band . ... Sierra Entertainment was a computer game developer and publisher active from 1980 to 2004. ... Tool is an American progressive rock band, formed in 1990 in Los Angeles, California, when drummer Danny Carey joined the rehearsal of his neighbor, singer Maynard James Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Paul dAmour, when nobody else would show up. ...

See also

• Shugborough House inscription
• Arcadia (paradise)

Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England has in its grounds an 18th-century monument commissioned by Admiral George Anson, 1st Baron Anson, bearing an inscription that is thought to be an uncracked ciphertext. ... This page is about the fictional land of Arcadia - for the real Greek region see Arcadia, or for other uses arcadia (disambiguation) Arcadia was a concept in Greek mythology or a land untouched by human civilisation, free of war and a place of outstanding natural beauty - in this way it...

External links

• Paul Smith, "Et in Arcadia ego"
• Marc Wiesmann, "Classical Arcadia"
• Guercino's painting illustrated at the official Galleria Barbarini website (text in Italian)

Notes

References

• Panofsky, Erwin (1993). Meaning in the Visual Arts. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-64551-7.
• McCarthy, Cormac (December 1993). Blood Meridian : Or, the Evening Redness in the West. Pan MacMillan. ISBN 0-330-31256-1.