Et in Arcadia Ego (Poussin)

Three shepherds and a calm shepherdess gather around a weathered stone tomb in a sunlit landscape, one of them tracing with his finger the carved words ET IN ARCADIA EGO - 'Even in Arcadia, I am here.' Poussin makes death speak quietly from within the pastoral paradise, not with horror but with grave, classical composure, the figures posed like a frieze. Now in the Louvre, it is the most famous treatment of the motto. The Italian painter Guercino had used the same words earlier, in a starker memento mori also in this collection.