The Enigma of the Epitaph: Et in Arcadia Ego by Nicolas Poussin
- Art d'Histoire
- May 28
- 3 min read
In the seventeenth century, a recurring pictorial motif features shepherds of Arcadia gathered around an ancient tomb.
On the sepulchre, the Latin inscription "Et in Arcadia ego" raises questions. Erwin Panofsky's study remains a cornerstone of classical historiography.
The Tradition of the Memento Mori
In the earliest representations of the Shepherds of Arcadia, the meaning of the epitaph is unequivocal. The canvas painted by Guercino around 1616 and the first version produced by Nicolas Poussin around 1628, kept at Chatsworth, are similar.
A human skull sits atop the tomb, a classic symbol of the memento mori. The Latin phrase invites the spectator to remember their own mortality and the futility of earthly pleasures: "Remember that you will die."
In Poussin’s Chatsworth version, the skull, placed on the tomb, dominates the inscription with its dark sockets, seeming to stare directly at the young shepherds from beyond. According to the strict rules of Latin grammar, it is Death herself, personified, who is speaking.
She reigns supreme, even in Arcadia, a mythological land usually associated with pastoral innocence. The Italian biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori, a friend of the painter, confirms this moralising reading by emphasising that death strikes in the very midst of felicity.
The Shift: The Erasure of the Macabre
About ten years later, around 1637-1638, Poussin painted a second version of the Shepherds of Arcadia, now exhibited at the Louvre. The change is radical.
The tomb is now placed parallel to the pictorial plane, meaning aligned with the surface of the canvas, which confers greater stability and serenity to the scene, all served by a balanced arrangement of the figures.
The skull has disappeared—a removal that renders the literal translation of the epitaph obsolete and raises the following question: who is speaking now?
Without an allegorical figure of Death to take on the pronoun "I" (ego), the spectator is forced to reassign the speech. The message comes, Panofsky suggests, from the entity resting within the sepulchre.
From Strained Grammar to the Birth of the Elegy
This transfer of the speaker combines, to the delight of exegetes, with the flexibility of Latin syntax.
For the deceased to be able to express themselves, one must assume the ellipsis of a verb conjugated in the past tense, replacing the implied present tense verb of the first version: eram instead of sum.
The translation then slides toward a nostalgic affirmation where the occupant of the tomb recalls that they, too, once knew the joys of Arcadian life. The painter's new composition forces the spectator to twist grammatical rules while preserving the coherence of the image.
The French biographer André Félibien was the first to propose this interpretation. He initiated a reading that was maintained throughout the eighteenth century. Abbé du Bos in 1719, followed by Denis Diderot, translated the expression by insisting on the deceased's past stay in the delightful land.
And while, later on, Gustave Flaubert saw in it an absolute nonsense, this rereading of the epitaph opened the way to new paintings, more cheerful than a traditional memento mori.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, with The Kiss painted around 1775, provides an example. It is no longer the shadow of death that hangs over earthly happiness, but joy and love that come to enchant the realm of the dead, proving that bliss can exist beyond death; the "Et in Arcadia Ego" is found there once again.
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