Narrative Painting and Narratives about Paintings: Poussin among the PhilosophersAuthor(s): Peter HeehsSource: Narrative, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Oct., 1995), pp. 211-231Published by: Ohio State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20107057Accessed: 22/07/2009 00:33

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Peter Heehs

Narrative Painting and

Narratives about Paintings: Poussin Among The Philosophers

Narrative, indispensable for ordering events in time, can also be used to give unified meaning to forms in space. Most people shown a figurative picture can

without difficulty invent a story, often elaborate and original, about what is hap pening (often with reference to what has happened and will happen) to the fig ures. Primary school teachers routinely use this method to teach perceptive and

linguistic skills to children. Adults looking at a painting in a book or a museum

frequently invent narratives of this sort to explain to themselves or others what the painting is about. This is especially appropriate when the painting translates a historical, mythological or literary narrative (I will refer to such works as nar

rative paintings), but it can also be done when the painting has no obvious nar

rative intent. Whatever the subject of a painting, viewers make use of plotted language to explain its meaning to themselves and others. According to Louis

Marin, every viewer of an artwork "converts the iconic representational model into language, and more precisely into a story" (298). This is as true of trained critics as of casual museum-goers. In whatever way art historians and critics go about their task, one of their central aims, writes David Carrier, is "to translate

pictures into words in this [narrative] way" ("Art History" 314). "All interpreta tions," he says elsewhere, "are narratives" ("Circa" 666).

Art-critical narratives that account only for the visible surface of a painting (I will call these "naive narratives") do not go very far in elucidating its meaning. Such narratives are inevitably subjective: different writers give different accounts of the same picture. To overcome this difficulty critics have developed various

Peter Heehs is a historian who has written extensively on modern India and on historical

theory. His most recent book is The Bomb in Bengal: The Origins of Revolutionary Terrorism in

India. He lives in Pondicherry, India, where he is associated with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives

and Research Library. The present paper grew out of a presentation he gave to a seminar led by Dr.

Michael Fried at the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College. He would like to thank

Dr. Anu Aneja for going through an earlier version and offering many helpful suggestions.

NARRATIVE, Vol. 3, No. 3 (October 1995)

Copyright 1995 by the Ohio State University Press

212 Peter Heehs

theoretical approaches, each of which claims to bring out what the critic consid ers to be the real meaning of the work, or at least to add depth or breadth to our

appreciation of it. Such critical narratives often include so much theoretical data

and argumentation that it is hard to recognize them as narratives, but all of

them "translate pictures into words" in a plotted way. Critics sometimes give more importance to their theories than to the work they are trying to explain, but most do deal with the painting's visible content, often by means of a narra

tive similar in form to the naive variety. Critical narratives about paintings extend themselves along the "horizontal"

(diachronic) axis of history or the "vertical" (synchronie) axis of structure, or

both.l I will classify the different types of critical narrative according to their

principal axes. Historical narratives lie on the diachronic axis and assume a syn

tagmatic relation between elements. The two principal divisions of historical nar

ratives are what I call historicist narratives, which regard historical events or the

time-spirit as influencing the production of the works, and art-historical narra

tives, which view the work as forming part of a line of artistic development. Structural narratives lie on the synchronie axis and assume a paradigmatic rela

tion between elements. The two principal divisions of this type are formal narra

tives, which are concerned with analogical relations of pure form (lines, shapes, masses, etc.), and differential structural narratives, which generally are concerned

with semiotic or semantic relations. A third main type of narrative, the metacrit

ical, is concerned not so much with the artwork itself as with what has been written about it. It claims to stand outside both axes, but by its nature tends to

be diachronic.

Historical or diachronic narratives relate one or more artworks to other works by the same or different creators, or to the general course of history. In

historicist narratives, particular or general artistic development is seen as influ

enced or determined by historical events, trends or Zeitgeist. Biographical critics

try to show the relation of an artist's work to events in his or her life-history. Historians of style stress the importance of period: "Not everything is possible at

all times. Vision itself has its history" (W?fflin 11). Social critics approach a

painter's oeuvre through the social history of his or her times, often conceived as

a stage in a dialectical or evolutionary progression. Art-historical narratives show

the relations between artworks and other artworks. Art historians try to find de

liberate influences or borrowings in order to trace the sources of an artist's oeuvre, a given work, or its elements. Connoisseurs study especially the relations of a

single artist's works to one another in order to authenticate them, place them in

chronological order, and so forth. The iconographer sometimes stands back from

specific artists or works in order to trace "a history of iconographie formulae or

'types'" (Panofsky, Meaning 17). All theories of structure assume an underlying, not outwardly discernible

framework of relations that gives meaning to the component elements and a

general coherence to the whole. Since L?vi-Strauss first applied Saussurean lin

guistics to cultural studies, structures have been understood to be systems of

differential signs, each defined "not by its analogical and in a way natural link

with a content, but essentially by its place within a system of differences" (Barthes,

Poussin among the Philosophers 213

"Sociologie" 42). Before structuralism, structure in art generally meant the ar

rangement of formal elements conceived analogically, that is, having a nonarbi

trary mimetic relation with the person or thing represented. L?vi-Strauss himself

distinguishes the semiotic sign-systems of linguistics and anthropology from those of figurative art; in the latter the relation between signified and signifier is not

arbitrary but homological. Some recent theories (the New Art History) treat the

painterly sign in more strictly semiological terms.

Differential structuralisms, whether in linguistics, anthropology or criticism, regard the elements as signs (signifier/signified pairs) that combine to form units on a higher level of complexity. This integration gives rise to meaning.2 The in variants of the system are the formal laws governing combination, which consti tute an unconscious structure. In analogical theories of structure the elements are

"atomic" and invariable; they take on relational meaning by being associated with other elements in created structures.

The value of any structural model lies in the "regulated transformations

[transformations r?gl?es] ... to which they lend themselves" (Barthes, "Intro duction" 23). Differential structural analysis seeks to discover "rules [r?gles] of transformation that allow the passage from one variation to another, by oper ations similar to those of algebra" (L?vi-Strauss, Anthropologie 269). Such trans formations are non-genetic and operate outside history. In analogical structural

analysis "transformation" refers to changes in the arrangement of the "atomic" units of the work, generally observed by comparing one work and another that stands in genetic relation to it.

Both sorts of transformation are of considerable interest to theorists and historians of art. "Aesthetic emotion," says L?vi-Strauss, "is the way in which we react when a nonsignificant object is promoted to the role of signifier .... The true function of aesthetic transposition or promotion is to raise to the level of the

significant something which did not exist in this mode or form in its raw state"

(Charbonnier 123-25). This promotion reveals the structure and the rules that

govern transformation. To art historians "transformation" generally refers to one or more artists' differing use of the same elements, or longterm changes in the use of artistic motifs and formulas.

Structural theories tend to treat the work as ahistorical and autonomous; structural critics thus may limit themselves to describing the work's relational network and the meaning that arises from this. But the transformations that in terest critics, differential as well as analogical, are best seen spread out along the axis of time. Most structuralist critics therefore make use of the data and tech

niques of historical narratives. Metacritical narrators claim to stand outside both the structural and historical axis, recounting a narrative of narratives about a

painting, artist, school, etc. But metanarratives are almost always organized

chronologically and often assume the existence of constructed and unconscious structures. In fact all the types of narrative I have distinguished rarely exist in their pure form: most written narratives are mixed, though one type predomi nates. It might be safer to speak not of types but of narrative approaches or

strategies. In what follows, however, I retain the notion of types because it will

help me in my metacritical analysis of the art-critical narrative. Positioning my

214 Peter Heehs

self at the intersection of the two axes, I will seek a comprehensive understanding

by attempting what Barthes says we must do in order to understand literary nar

ratives: "project the horizontal Unkings of the narrative 'thread' onto an implic

itly vertical axis" ("Introduction" 11).

II

Nicolas Poussin, known since the eighteenth century as the "painter-philosopher," has as long been a philosopher's painter. Diderot ranked no artist of the past above him. Among contemporary philosophers, Louis Marin, David Carrier and

Richard W?lheim have written at length about him, and the philosophical an

thropologist Claude L?vi-Strauss opens his last book with a section entitled

"Looking at Poussin." The French artist has also attracted critics of a philosoph ical bent, among them Erwin Panofsky and Anthony Blunt. The abundance,

diversity and philosophical deliberateness of the narratives in the Poussin critical

corpus make his work an appropriate focus for a critical study of art-critical

narratives.3

In this part I will examine a number of critical narratives about one of

Poussin's best-known paintings. By presenting them chronologically, I hope to

throw light on the historical development of the art-critical narrative, and at the same time show lines of influence or reaction among the critics. I will show how

the critics' theoretical assumptions determine what they deal with and how they deal with it, and how this sometimes gets them into trouble. I will also show that

most of the critics, even those with the most abstract theoretical grids, sum up their interpretations by means of narratives about the figures embedded in their

critical narratives. I will quote from several of these embedded narratives to

show how different critics use a very similar form to express divergent readings. Most of Poussin's works are explicitly narrative paintings: they translate

Biblical, historical or allegorical themes. The one I have chosen is generally con

sidered an allegory, but since its sources are obscure, critics have been free to put

together the elements of the story as they liked. The painting is The Arcadian

Shepherds (plate 1), one of Poussin's most popular but also most problematic works.4 It shows three shepherds and a woman in different attitudes before a

tomb upon which is inscribed "ET IN ARCADIA EGO." In focusing on critical

narratives of the painting, I will confine myself to the interaction between one of

the shepherds and the woman.

The first critical narratives about The Arcadian Shepherds were written by Poussin's biographers Bellori (1672) and F?libien (1688), both of whom knew the

artist. The central portion of each account is a simple narrative about the figures. I translate F?libien's French, an expanded paraphrase of Bellori's Italian:

Poussin has painted a shepherd who has one knee on the ground and who

points out with his finger these words engraved on a tomb: "Et in Arcadia

Ego." . . . Behind the shepherd is a young man, his head covered with a

garland of flowers, who leans against the tomb and regards it thoughtfully

Poussin among the Philosophers 215

Fig. 1. Nicholas Poussin, The Arcadian Shepherds (Paris, Louvre). Copyright PHOTO R.M.N.

and with concentration. Another shepherd is nearby; he leans down and

shows the written words to a young woman agreeably adorned who places her hand on the shoulder of the young man, looks at him, and seems to

make him read this inscription (131, my italics).

In their critical accounts, Bellori and F?libien hardly go beyond their simple, almost naive narratives about the figures. Both also translate and explain the

Latin inscription, and both provide a summary interpretation, in F?libien's phrase: "the recollection of death in the midst of life's prosperities" (F?libien 131; see also

Bellori 464). For a century and a half after F?libien, critical narratives about The Arca

dian Shepherds were concerned chiefly with the content of the work, dealing with it in a naive, subjective and literary way. Because of the lack of good repro

ductions, critics had to rely on their memories and often got the details wrong. This is the case with brief accounts about The Arcadian Shepherds by the abb?

Dubos, Diderot, and Hazlitt. (Dubos [1719] cited in Lemonnier 280; Diderot

[1758] cited in Panofsky, Meaning 317; Hazlitt [1821] 172-71). All these writers

assume that the painting has universal appeal: it speaks, writes Hazlitt, "(and for

ever will speak on) of ages past and ages yet to come!" This universality permits him to cite a poet such as Milton in the course of his discussion of the painting,

216 Peter Heehs

and results in eighteen citations from Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, Keats, and

other poets in his seven-page essay. The same subjective, universalist and literary approach characterizes essays

on The Arcadian Shepherds written a hundred years later by Henry Lemonnier

(1925) and Werner Weisbach (1930). Both scholars deal subjectively with the

contents of the painting and adorn their accounts with literary allusions and quo tations. Weisbach's dealing with the interaction between the shepherd and the

woman is unremarkable: "A youth, leaning on his staff, points [the inscription] out to a young woman" (Gazette 292). But both Weisbach and Lemonnier draw on disciplines developed during the nineteenth century?philology and academic art history?to extend their accounts along the diachronic axis. Both discuss the

history of the Arcadia theme in Western literature and make the conjecture that

the Arcadian content of the painting was in some way a reflection of Poussin's

residence in Rome. More significantly, Lemonnier suggests and Weisbach con

firms in detail that the "Et in Arcadia Ego" theme had been painted by Guercino

shortly before Poussin came to Rome and that Poussin himself had done another

version (now in the collection of the Earl of Chattsworth) several years before

the Louvre version. It is generally accepted that Poussin saw the Guercino, and

that Poussin's Louvre version, whatever its date, was painted after the Chatts

worth version. This establishes a chronological sequence that permits the con

struction of historical narratives.

To Lemonnier and Weisbach the sequence is of interest for helping to estab

lish the sources of the Louvre version and of the phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego" which has its first recorded appearance in the Guercino. It was left to Erwin Pa

nofsky to make creative use of the sequence in his famous essay "Et in Arcadia

Ego."5 Panofsky considers the painting's narrative and its meaning to be almost

self-evident. He offers nothing original in his reading of the interaction: "The

second [shepherd is] explaining [the inscription's] meaning to a lovely girl, who

listens to him in a quiet thoughtful attitude" ("Conception" 224). What interests

him are two problems posed by Lemonnier and Weisbach, one "bearing on the

Arcadia conception as a whole," the other "bearing on the wording of the in

scription" ("Conception" 224). Both are problems of diachronic narrative trans

formation. How did Arcadia, a harsh Greek valley, become the earthly paradise of European literature? How did the meaning of the Latin inscription change be

tween the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, and what did this have to do with

Poussin's differing treatment of the theme in his two versions?

Panofsky devotes eight pages of his essay to the Arcadia question. He shows

how the Sicily of Theocritus's eclogues (third century BCE), with its realistic

descriptions of pastoral life, was transformed by Virgil (first century BCE) into

the legendary Arcadia, land of lovelorn shepherds, owing to the influence of a

mention by Polibius (second century BCE) of his native Arcadia, famous for its

singers. Virgil's Arcadia was rediscovered by Sannazzaro and other Renaissance

writers and had a four-hundred year run as the setting of European pastoral

poetry ("Conception" 225-32; Meaning 297-304).6 This transformation, of interest

to scholars trained in classical philology, has little to do with the meaning or

genesis of Poussin's picture, which does not treat the Arcadia theme per se in an

original way. The Latin formula is central to any interpretation of the painting,

Poussin among the Philosophers 111

however, and Panofsky's treatment of this question has been referred to by most

of those who have written about it since. Panofsky begins his discussion with

straightforward philology, devoting several pages to a history of the formula in

Latin, French, German and English literature. His concern is that at the time he

wrote, the formula was understood in a way that violated Latin grammar. "Et," he insists, must go with "in Arcadia": thus the only correct translation is "Even

[et] in Arcadia (am) I." Many of his contemporaries, however, took the phrase to

mean "I too [et] (lived) in Arcadia," that is, "I too once enjoyed heavenly joys on

earth."7 Panofsky goes to some trouble to show that this "error" was first com

mitted by F?libien and compounded by Diderot. But then, in a surprising rpove, he says the real culprit was Poussin, and that F?libien's mistranslation "did vio

lence to Latin grammar but justice to the new meaning of Poussin's composi tion" {Meaning 316). The "correct" translation is right for the Guercino and the

Chattsworth; for the Louvre version the "incorrect" translation is the right one.

This linking of one translation of the formula to one version of the painting and another translation to another version raises the matter of the formula from

a "mere philological question" to one connected with the "History of Types"

("Conception" 224). Going beyond the simple philological knowledge he shared

with Lemonnier, Weisbach, and other scholars of the period, Panofsky introduces a number of interesting ideas from the neo-Kantian hermeneutics that is the theo

retical basis of his work (Hart 553-59). In so doing, however, he leaves himself

open to challenge on the philological level. Many Latinists would not agree that

"Et" must go with "in Arcadia."8 Further, Panofsky's insistence that the change in the interpretation of the painting was a result of F?libien's "grammatical er

ror" is not well argued. Panofsky begins by comparing the paraphrases (neither is a translation) of the inscription by Bellori and F?libien. Bellori's text, trans

lated from the Italian more literally than by Panofsky, reads: "'ET IN ARCA

DIA EGO,' that is, that the tomb is found even in Arcadia and that Death takes

place in the midst of felicity" (Bellori 464). F?libien writes, "this inscription was

meant to show that the person in the tomb lived in Arcadia, and that death may be encountered amidst the greatest joys" (F?libien 131). Panofsky asserts that

Bellori's version is "perfectly correct and exact," since the "Ego" that "speaks" the

inscription is the tomb; F?libien, he argues, by making the speaker "the person in

the tomb," fundamentally distorted the sense of the inscription and thus the in

terpretation of the work. But F?libien never says who the "speaker" is. He simply

points out what is obvious: that the tomb is of interest to the shepherds because

it contains the body of a once-living Arcadian. Both critics also give a summary

interpretation of the work, and here, as we have seen, F?libien follows Bellori

exactly. Apparently embarrassed by this, Panofsky omitted this portion of F?li

bien's text in 1936, and in 1955 omitted its English translation. One must agree with Clare Pace when she observes that Panofsky, in saying that "F?libien, un

like Bellori, misinterpreted the Latin inscription," does not "take account of the

whole of F?libien's sentence" (commentary, F?libien 163). Nevertheless Panofsky's elegant solution to the puzzle?that each of the

possible translations of the inscription goes with one of the two Poussins?has

found wide acceptance. Carrier speaks of the "canonical status" of Panofsky's "classic analysis," which, he says, "no historian [has] challenged" ("Circa" 652-3).

218 Peter Heehs

This last statement is not true, as we shall see. But Panofsky's translation of the

inscription is now widely followed?by the writer of the label of the painting in the Louvre, for instance.9

In a compact narrative of 1937, Jerome Klein resorts to irony to throw doubt on Panofsky's philology. "F?libien," he writes, "might be expected to know

what the Latin meant to a Frenchman of the seventeenth century" (314). As for

Poussin, how far he "was aware of the philological aspect of his use of the

phrase in its modified context is difficult to determine" (314). Klein devotes half his account to an analysis of the formal structure of the work and half to a con

sideration of its genesis. Structurally he divides the figures into groups in several different ways, using symmetries and oppositions to bring out the significance of each figure. Thus: "The crouching inner figure on the right . . . points to the

inscription as a whole and looks up to his standing companion, thus indicating he has grasped its significance. . . . [She] does know the meaning, which she shows by her reflective calm and the gesture of reassurance in placing her hand on the shoulder of the troubled youth who looks up to her" (314). Historically, Klein compares the style and content of the Guercino and the two Poussins, ex

plaining the "transformation from the first to the second version" as "an assimi

lation of Baroque space and its transformation into an extended, classically ordered configuration" (314). This and related changes in the structure and prin cipal motives (the inscription and the woman) were due to Poussin's deliberate

rethinking of the theme. For instance he replaced the "Titianesque ardent woman

with bared breast" of the Chattsworth version with a "mature Raphaelesque young woman" whose composure in the face of death is due to her being female, "since the nearer death of the sexual life, so much closer for women than for

men, holds no terror for her" (314). This dubious foray into female physiology and psychology (perilous country for a male critic) is Klein's only departure from solid formal analysis and historical genesis.

The young Anthony Blunt's 1938 contribution to the study of The Arcadian

Shepherds was to point out that the Chattsworth version "was not conceived as a single piece but as one of a pair of pictures," the other being Midas at the Source of the Patroclus. He compares this to another pair whose themes were

Midas and Daphne and Apollo, and these works to the Louvre Apollo and

Daphne. This wide-ranging historical connoisseurship informs Blunt's handling of the genesis of The Arcadian Shepherds. The nymph in the Chattsworth ver

sion was not just an example the influence of Titian but was "directly borrowed from Titian's Bacchanal in the Prado" ("Notes" 99). Blunt endorses Klein's idea that the Chattsworth version expresses only regret while the Louvre version ex

presses resignation, supporting this claim with comparisons to related paintings from the two periods. The resignation was that of the Stoic philosophers, under

whose influence Poussin painted many of his last works. Blunt later developed this idea in his landmark study Nicolas Poussin, which contains a straightfor

ward embedded narrative: "The shepherds kneel or stand silently, meditating on

the lesson they have just read . . . The kneeling [sic] shepherd . . . turns round to make sure the shepherdess has understood the burden of the words" (304).

Most critical narratives of The Arcadian Shepherds published between 1938

Poussin among the Philosophers 219

and 1980 deal with problems already encountered in predictable ways. Perhaps the first radically different approach was that of Louis Marin, one characterized

by an explicit theoretical emphasis. Marin's stated interest is "test some notions

and procedures elaborated in contemporary semiotic and semantic theories by

using a specific painting as an experimental device" (293). Yet he also attempts to

describe his chosen painting, the Louvre Arcadian Shepherds, in "its irreducible

singularity" (293). Theoretically he draws heavily on the linguistic and semiologi cal work of Emile Benveniste and Roman Jakobson. His first step is to take Ben

veniste's distinction between discours (discourse) and r?cit (narrative) and transfer

it from textual to iconic propositions. In r?cit the author blots out himself and all

that is foreign to the narrative, so that it seems to tell itself. In discours the use

of pronouns and other deictic words makes the relational nature of the enuncia

tion clear. The question Marin poses is whether an explicitly narrative painting like The Arcadian Shepherds is one that negates its iconic deixis (305). To ex

plore this possibility he reads the painting in the light of Jakobson's theory of

communicative exchange: emission, message, reception, referent, code. Such un

derlying relationships, which "do not appear on the plane of representation," are,

"precisely the 'subject' or the 'istoria' told by the painting" (310-11). By looking at the work in this way Marin hopes to be able "to explore representational sys tems as apparatuses of power" (303).

Marin's many theoretical influences (Foucault is apparent; Lacan, along with

Jakobson, acknowledged) determine his heterodox reading of the painting. When

Marin states that "in a sense the painting is the pictorial representation of that

[Jakobsonian] model" (311), one wonders in what sense this might apply to an

artifact created in the seventeenth century. Basing himself on Jakobson, Marin

takes the painting to be an iconic dialogue in which "three figures exchange a

message whose referent is what the fourth figure is doing." The fourth figure is

the kneeling shepherd who is reading the inscription. All the other figures are

seen in relation to him, for instance the two whose interaction we have been

studying: "The shepherd on the right obviously asks [the woman] a question

concerning the kneeling man he is pointing to" (310). Obvious to whom? Bellori,

F?libien, Weisbach, Panofsky, Klein, Blunt, and Gombrich (309) all agree that

the shepherd on the right is pointing out the inscription to the woman. Marin

says one must read iconic relationships by examining "gestures and gazes," "posi tions of heads and orientation of eyes" (310). It is hard for me to imagine that someone looking at the painting in the Louvre without the benefit of a precon ceived theory could conclude that the shepherd on the right?who is painted in

unusually fine detail?is pointing to the kneeling man.

Marin's theoretical preconceptions get him into trouble again when he deals

with the inscription. According to Marin, the letter R of Arcadia, to which the

kneeling shepherd is pointing?and which, Marin says, is "the initial of the name

of Cardinal Rospigliosi, who invented the phrase 'Et in Arcadia ego' and com

missioned the painting"?is a "pure signifier," "the signifier of the name of the

Father" (320-23). Marin bases this Lacanian inference on a passage in Bellori on

Rospigliosi as discussed by Panofsky. Panofsky however says that it is "rather

improbable that the subject was suggested to Poussin by the prelate Rospigliosi"

220 Peter Heehs

("Conception" 252). In order to show that Bellori's account "might not be al

together groundless," Panofsky invents an elaborate scenario he himself charac

terizes as a "conjecture" (254). The editor of the 1976 critical edition of Bellori's

Vite goes further, stating that other sources do not confirm that Rospigliosi was

the commissioner of the painting, which in all likelihood was executed for Cava

li?re d'Avice (Borea in note to Bellori 647). Marin ends his discussion of the painting with the question: "Demonstration

or fantasy?" Judged solely as an interpretation of an artwork in its "irreducible

singularity," it would have to be considered fantastic. But Marin's principal pur

pose is to present and apply a theory. His narrative is really about the semiotic

and semantic structures of artworks. Design, "the 'soul' of the sign," is an invisi

ble network "beneath the visible brightness of colour" (301). And below the level

of signs is the level of discourse. His daring application of the theories of Benve

niste and Jakobson to painting yields some interesting fruit. And Marin recog nizes the difficulties of this approach. In transferring Benveniste's linguistic model

from "textual to iconic propositions," he admits he must put aside "for practical reasons any doubts about the epistemological validity of that transference" (295).

Other semiological critics are not so careful, nor so convinced about the mimetic or analogical nature of the pictorial sign.10

Klein's structural narrative focuses on the underlying network of pure form, Marin's on the underlying network of signification. Claude L?vi-Strauss, structu

ralist par excellence, examines the painting as elsewhere he examines myths: as a

system of transformations. Any such system can account for change without ref erence to history; but it is possible to account for historically attested change in

terms of structure and transformation. The historical development of the "Et in

Arcadia Ego" theme from the Guercino through the Louvre Poussin is a fact, but it can be explained without assuming the "rupture of sense" that is at the

center of Panofsky's explanation. One must regard the Chattsworth Poussin as a

transitional stage between the other two versions. The Guercino has a large death's-head but no woman, the Louvre version a woman but no death's-head.

The Chattsworth version, with its small death's-head and unprominent woman, is transitional. The woman in the Louvre version is a transformation of the

Guercino's death's-head. She is Death, and it is she who implicitly speaks "the

words engraved on the stone of the tomb and which she invites the shepherds to

read" {Regarder 20). "Perhaps," L?vi-Strauss continues in a surprisingly lyrical embedded narrative, "she has just entered from the right, unperceived until she

puts her hand on the shepherd's shoulder, the shepherd turns her eyes towards

her, not so surprised at this apparition . . . r {Regarder 20-21). L?vi-Strauss's rules of transformation, themselves almost mathematical in

their abstraction, help him arrive at what he considers a concrete solution to one

of the major problems in the interpretation of the painting: Who is the woman?

L?vi-Strauss calls this one of the "semantic" problems that Poussin had to re

solve in painting the picture. There were also formal problems, those involving the "placement on a surface of lines and colours beautiful in themselves" {Re

garder 68). This recognition of the aesthetic aspect of painting is a refreshing

change from the "antivisual bent" of theory-heavy criticism. The devices of rep

Poussin among the Philosophers 221

resentational art are signs, but these signs, unlike those of purely arbitrary sys tems such as non-poetic language, do have a significant relationship with their

referent (Charbonnier 89, 107-9). It is unclear, however, how far motivated signs fit in with the methods of structural analysis. It is fundamental to L?vi-Strauss's

thought that the elements of a structure do not have fixed meaning, such as

is assumed for example in Jung's theory of archetypes {Anthropologie 238).n

Meaning is the result of the operation of rules of transformation. The Guercino

death's-head is transformed into the woman of the Louvre Poussin: therefore the woman = Death. But this assumes that the death's-head = Death. Is this not

archetypal symbolism, a reversion to the symbol-lists of traditional iconography? This is not the only difficulty in L?vi-Strauss's reading. Here as elsewhere in

his work, he assumes that structure dwells in the unconscious, free from the con

straints of temporal causation: "In painting the first version, Poussin probably did not foresee the second. But the germs of the transformation that was going to take place in his mind were perhaps already present" {Regarder 20). A struc

turalist might have a hard time explaining to a historian where and in what way the seeds were present. Here as elsewhere a creative use of the vertical axis of

explanation leaves unanswered questions arising on the horizontal.

Most of the critics discussed above engage in some amount of dialogue with one another. This tendency reaches its apex in the work of David Carrier, who

writes: "We cannot know his [Poussin's] work as it really is apart from how it is

understood in a long process of interpretation" {Paintings 81-82). The unit of

discourse of an art-critical narrative, Carrier says elsewhere, is not the painting itself, but "the painting embedded in various art historians'" texts ("Art History"

318). Accordingly when he considers The Arcadian Shepherds, Carrier gives most

of his attention to Panofsky's interpretation, which (as noted above) he considers

"classic," "unchallenged," and "canonical." He offers no new reading but ap

proaches the painting through the critic, his aim being not so much to criticize

Panofsky's interpretation as to discuss his critical preconceptions, which Carrier

calls "humanism."

According to Carrier, the success of Panofsky's interpretation, its elegance as a piece of critical writing, comes from its linking each of Poussin's treatments

of the theme with one reading of the inscription. "The distinction between what

linguists call the deictic and aorist tenses" permits Panofsky "to contrast these two images." The Chattsworth version is deictic, since the inscription has a spe cific speaker, the entombed Arcadian; the Louvre version is aorist, since the in

scription is must be read "without reference to the presence of any speaker" ("Circa" 649-50; see also "Art History" 319-20). There is a confusion about

"deictic" and "aorist" here that ought to be cleared up if they are to retain their

value as critical terms. The linguistic distinction made by Benveniste in his often

cited chapter on the French verb is between r?cit historique (historical narrative) and discours. In French, the aorist is the principal but not the only narrative

tense, "the tense of the event without regard to the person of a narrator." In dis

cours on the other hand every statement supposes a speaker and a auditor. All

three persons of the verb and the personal pronoun are used (Benveniste, ch. 19,

especially 241-42). Benveniste discusses pronouns in another, equally technical

222 Peter Heehs

chapter, but nowhere in the Probl?mes does he use the word d?ictique. Other

linguists have applied it to words, mostly pronouns and adverbs, that specify the

situation of an utterance (I/you, here/there, now/then). In his 1980 article Marin uses the notion of deixis to help him solve "the problem resulting from the trans

ference of the linguistic model of communication to painting." He suggests that

deixis might be expanded to include verb tenses (305). (So far as I know no lin

guist has followed this up.) A few years after the publication of Marin's article, Norman Bryson (who

certainly was familiar with the article) distinguished aorist and deictic in his dis

cussion of "the gaze" and "the glance" in painting {Vision 87-96).12 It is this dis

cussion that Carrier cites. He certainly is within his rights to distinguish images in which "words are to be imagined as spoken by depicted figures" and others in

which represented words are "spoken by no one" ("Circa" 659), but to call these

"deictic" and "aorist" images is to stretch the sense of the terms beyond useful

limits. And this imprecision gets Carrier into trouble. His meta-interpretation of

Panofsky on Poussin is that the Chattsworth Arcadian Shepherds is deictic while

the Louvre version is aorist. That is to say, according to Panofsky the inscription in the Louvre version has no speaker, and hence must be translated "Even in Ar

cady there is death." This is not how Panofsky translates the inscription; indeed

it is not a possible translation. Nor is it true that Panofsky believes that the sec

ond inscription has no speaker. He goes to great lengths in both versions of his

essay to show that the inscription is spoken by the tomb. His transitional essay of 1938, "'Et in Arcadia Ego' and the Speaking Tomb," is specifically about this

subject.

According to Carrier the orthodox view of art-interpretation is that "nor

mally a picture should be uniquely interpreted, understood by being conjoined to

one and only one [interpretive] text." This, he says, is the view of most art

historians, including Panofsky: "Panofsky was a humanist, which means that for

him the aim of interpretation is to recreate, as best we can, what the artist in

tended." In principle this would result in a one-to-one match between picture and

critical narrative, though in practice even Panofsky admits that we can never

know whether our reconstruction of the artist's intentions is perfectly accurate

("Circa" 650, 663; see also Paintings 46). Against this attitude Carrier offers his

"anti-humanist" alternative: the goal of art-history is to produce "the best possi ble account" of artworks, "drawing on indirect as well as direct evidence." Other

wise stated, "To interpret a painting is to make sense of it by constructing a

narrative which explains as many features of it as possible in ways which are

original, suggestive, and plausible." The goal of art history is to produce as many such narratives as possible ("Circa" 664, 666, 667).

I agree with Carrier's general view of the centrality of narrative in writing about paintings, but I do not share his position on humanism, which does not

seem to be well worked out. Panofsky certainly is a humanistic critic, but it is

difficult to find Carrier's "humanism" in Panofsky's well-known essay "The His

tory of Art as a Humanistic Discipline," which Carrier cites. Panofsky does give considerable importance to artistic intention, but he never suggests that re-creation

of intention is the whole of interpretation. Rather, aesthetic experience consists

Poussin among the Philosophers 223

of "two entirely different acts," recreation of intention and "freely creating a set

of aesthetic values comparable to those with which we endow a tree or sunset"

(15). Another factor in humanistic criticism is "archaeological research," which is

linked with the re-creation of intention in an "organic situation," a non-vicious

hermeneutic circle (16). The humanistic art historian seeks always "to develop his recreative experiences so as to conform with the results of his archaeological research, while continually checking the results of his archaeological research

against the evidence of his recreative experiences" (18). Panofsky's clear state

ment that "'intention' cannot be absolutely determined" (12) should be enough to

preclude the idea that he imagined any interpretation could be final. It would seem rather that he, like Carrier, was in search of an original, suggestive and

plausible account.

Ill

The critical narratives discussed above represent all the types mentioned in part I; it is obvious that they exhibit considerable differences of form, tone, vocabu

lary and reliance on theory. Bellori, F?libien, Dubos, Diderot, and Hazlitt pres ent subjective naive narratives that go beyond the painting's content only in

making literary and biographical references. Lemonnier and Weisbach add so

phistication to their naive narratives with historical discussions of a literary theme

and historicist suggestions about the influence of life-events. They also observe

the historical development of the "Et in Arcadia Ego" motif. Panofsky pursues this as a case-study of "the history of types," alluding along the way to the his

tory of styles. His iconographical approach is expanded by Blunt the connoisseur

and criticized by Klein the formalist. Klein studies the painting's formal struc

ture, L?vi-Strauss its semiotic-transformative structure, and Marin its semiotic/ semantic structure. Marin and Carrier take a metacritical look at this narrative

of narratives, as I am doing here.

Throughout this history there is very little controversy about what the paint

ing is about. F?libien (131) agrees with Bellori (464) that it evokes (through the

inscription) "the recollection of death in the midst of life's prosperities." Panofsky feels that the picture's "inner meaning"

? "an elegiac sentiment aroused by the

contrast between friendship and love amid beautiful scenery and the tomb of one

who has left these joys forever"?is so clear that it requires no explication ("Con

ception" 224). For all Klein's criticism of Panofsky he agrees that the painting's

"elegiac spirit . . . involves quiet reflection on death, but death encountered as

the lot of one who also knew the bliss of Arcadian life" (315). Even Carrier takes

it for granted that inscription is "an observation about the inevitability of death

in human life" ("Circa" 649). Three hundred years of interpretive controversy have brought little change in the understanding of the core meaning of the work.13

Nor, for all the recent proliferation of theory, has the manner of presenta tion changed that much. It is remarkable that all the critics who essay an origi nal reading of the painting, even those most concerned with its underlying struc

ture, sum up their reading in a narrative that differs little in form from the naive

224 Peter Heehs

narratives of the earliest commentators. The differences, which are considerable, are in narrative style and detail. If we look back at the way the several critics

treat the interaction between the third shepherd and the woman, we will see

there is no general agreement about what is taking place except in regard to

what is visually undeniable: the man looks at the woman; her hand is on his

shoulder. Most of the critics (Bellori, Weisbach, Klein?as well as Gombrich) have the shepherd pointing out the inscription to the woman. Panofsky first

has him explaining it to her; twenty years later he has the two of them dis

cussing it {Meaning 313). Blunt has the shepherd ascertaining whether the

woman has understood it. L?vi-Strauss (with F?libien) has her inducing him to

read it. Marin, who is the only critic who thinks that the shepherd is pointing to

the kneeling man, at whom the woman is looking instead of at the inscription, has the shepherd asking her about that man.

The lack of agreement epitomizes a central problem of art interpretation. The critical approaches we have considered all claim to go beyond the subjectiv

ity of the naive narrative to something having more general validity. But if critics

using these approaches produce quite different narratives, each of which can only be affirmed within its own theoretical framework, it would seem that little prog ress has been made. The narratives we have considered differ from the naive nar

rative only in taking the support of more or less elaborate self-justifying theories.

If there is no way of evaluating them, the narrative of art critical narratives

would seem to end in relativism.

No doubt the narratives we have considered are shaped to a large degree by the theoretical assumptions of the critics. But some critics, because or in spite of

their theories, have been able to make genetic or structural observations that are

of lasting value. Many of the naive humanistic assumptions of Hazlitt and his

predecessors would no longer be considered valid, but the disciplined humanism

of Weisbach, Panofsky and Blunt has uncovered philological and historical data

about The Arcadian Shepherds that no responsible critic could ignore. Formal

structural analysis is too valuable a tool to neglect, as is demonstrated by Klein's

application of it to Poussin. If semiotic structural analysis has generated less in

teresting narratives, the approach clearly holds much promise, which it will fulfil

when its practitioners have come to terms with the distinctive nature of the iconic

sign.

Since both the historical and structural approaches to art interpretation have

produced valuable results, one might speculate that a truly illuminating narrative

would be one that extends itself along both the synchronie and the diachronic

axes of interpretation. The difficulty is to determine the correct relation between

the two. This problem arose the moment Saussure formulated the now-famous

distinction; since then it has "not so much been settled as swept under the rug"

(see Culler, Saussure 85). A solution would benefit critics and cultural historians as much as linguists, for the synchrony/diachrony or structure/history distinc

tion is fundamental to all disciplines concerned with the interpretation of culture

and its products. In literary studies the diachronic approach finds its expression in biographical and historical criticism, the synchronie in the New Criticism and

its successors, structural and semiotic criticism. Quentin Skinner finds a similar

Poussin among the Philosophers 225

pair of competing orthodoxies in the history of ideas: one that studies a work in

"the context 'of religious, political and economic factors,'" another that "insists on the autonomy of the text itself as the sole necessary key to its own meaning"

(3). I have shown that the theories of art critics and historians may be clas

sified along the same lines. And while those on one side or the other generally insist on the priority of their approach, there is a general agreement that both

have a place in the enterprise of art interpretation.14 Scholars in the humanities may not be able to arrive at a grand unified the

ory of theories?but they can attempt to bridge the gulf between synchrony and

diachrony, structure and history. L?vi-Strauss, the writer most identified with the

structural approach, denies that there is an antinomy between the synchronie and the diachronic. Historic change may be seen as structural transformation.

There is no need to choose between the historical and structural perspectives: "in

arranging structures logically" scholars need not resign themselves "to know

nothing about their evolution in time"; in their investigations they are led to the

discovery of "deep structures that, because they are deep, may also have been common in the past" (L?vi-Strauss, "Histoire" 1226-27; see also L?vi-Strauss

"Champ"). Working from the other side, a historian interested in structure ex

ploits its explanatory potential by viewing historical narrative as a transformation

of a chronicle of events "into a completed diachronic process, about which one

can then ask questions as if he were dealing with a synchronie structure of rela

tionships" (White 6). Both these writers view history in terms of structure. Skin

ner's way of handling the dichotomy is to suggest a third alternative: to give each

its proper value by means of a rehabilitated view of intention.

We have seen the importance of artistic intention to Panofsky's hermeneu

tics. It is also at least implicit in the other critics we have dealt with, even those

who lay most stress on unconscious structure. Klein appeals to Poussin's inten

tions in his criticisms of Panofsky's philology, Marin to justify his eccentric read

ing of The Arcadian Shepherds. L?vi-Strauss does the same, and also explicitly affirms that one can attribute a subjective attitude to post-Renaissance artists

(Charbonnier 113). Even Carrier in a relatively early article accepts that the goal of art history is "to reveal the paintings as the artist intended them to be seen"

("Interpreters" 153). In his latest work, in which he abjures this view, he neverthe

less concedes, "In my account appeal to Poussin's intentions is also very much in

the background" {Paintings 103). I have not hesitated to appeal to Poussin's intentions in the course of my

criticisms of Panofsky, Marin, Carrier and L?vi-Strauss. There are good docu

mentary reasons for believing that the artist had clear intentions about his paint

ings. He uses the word intention in one of his letters; he frequently uses repr? senter and related terms to indicate what he meant specific figures to mean; he

writes often of specific contents, to which he assigns specific meanings (Poussin

57-58, 83, 106, 160, 163). His disciple Le Brun said that his artistic judgment and knowledge were "such that he never put anything into his paintings without

going deeply into the reasons" and that he exhibited his paintings only "after a

long and ripe deliberation of study and research" (cited in L?vi-Strauss, Regarder

25). Carrier grants "that Poussin determined the meaning of his paintings" but

226 Peter Heehs

feels that "that admission does not help the art historians who must describe

those works" {Paintings 54). I cannot agree. Like Skinner, I feel that the under

standing of intellectual or artistic creations "presupposes the grasp both of what

they were intended to mean and how this meaning was intended to be taken." As

interpreters our "essential aim . . . must be to recover this complex intention on

the part of the author" (48). The important word here is "complex." Skinner writes that it is wrong to say

that an agent "can eventually be said to have meant or done something which he

could never be brought to accept as a correct description of what he had meant or done," but he admits that another observer, a psychoanalytic critic for in

stance, "might be in a position to give a fuller or more convincing account of the

agent's behavior than he could give himself." Rather inconsistently, he adds that

such a description must not be "dependent on the use of criteria of description and classification not available to the agent himself" (28-29). This would mean

that psychoanalytic criticism would be valid only for agents born after the publi cation of The Interpretation of Dreams. One does not have to be a hard-core

Freudian to accept that agents can intend things they are not consciously aware

of, and that what we call the unconscious existed before Freud or his nineteenth

century predecessors. Mind is complex, motivations are complex, intention is

complex?so complex that, as both Panofsky and Carrier insist, we can never

know certainly or completely what an agent's intentions are.

The complex intention Skinner would have us recover is an amalgam of the

intention of the author (what the work was "intended to mean") and an ideal

reader ("how this meaning was intended to be taken"). Much of modern literary criticism has been an effort to work out the roles of author and reader, critics often placing exclusive emphasis on one or the other. Umberto Eco, like but

more comprehensively than Skinner, proposes a third possibility: "Between the intention of the author (very difficult to find out and frequently irrelevant to all

interpretation of a text) and the intention of the interpreter who (to quote Richard

Rorty) simply 'beats the text into a shape which will serve for his purpose,' there

is a third possibility. There is an intention of the text" (25). With this idea of the intentio opens, Eco has found a means of limiting the number of possible inter

pretations of a work without imposing the rule either of an elusive pre-textual in

tentio auctoris or of an endlessly indeterminable intentio lectoris. "If there are no

rules that help to ascertain which interpretations are the 'best' ones there is at

least a rule for ascertaining which ones are bad," namely "textual economy" (52).

Using this criterion Eco rejects cases of "overinterpretation" of texts, for example Gabriele Rossetti's Rosecrutian reading of The Divine Comedy.

Eco's idea of intentio opens can fruitfully be applied to the interpretation of

painting in general and The Arcadian Shepherds in particular. One reading of the painting links it to a narrative as fantastic as Rossetti's, involving the Cathars, the Templars, the treasure of Rennes-le-Ch?teau and a religious order descend

ing from the son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The authors of a book dealing with this speculate: "Whatever the origin of the phrase, 'Et in Arcadia Ego' seems, both for Guercino and for Poussin, to have [been?] more than a line of

elegiac poetry. Quite clearly it seems to have enjoyed some important secret sig nificance, which was recognisable or identifiable to certain other people?the

Poussin among the Philosophers 227

equivalent, in short, of a Masonic sign or password" (Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln

189-90). This reading of the painting requires so many farfetched suppositions and inferences that it may safely be rejected on grounds of textual economy.15

Applying Eco's principle to more academically respectable interpretations, one

may conclude that the inscription was not intended to signify the Name of the

Father, that there is no need to translate it differently in the Chattsworth and Louvre versions, and that there is no need to assume that the later version ex

isted in Poussin's unconscious while he painted the former.16 Which is not to

suggest that the readings of Marin, Panofsky and L?vi-Strauss are without merit.

Jonathan Culler, in an answer to Eco, maintains that "interpretation is interest

ing only when it is extreme." This statement does have some truth in it, but it

does not follow that "moderate interpretation, which articulates a consensus . . .

is of little interest" (110). All interpretations, extreme, moderate or revisionary, are winnowed by time. And while the grain of absolute Truth may never be

found, a good amount of worthless chaff gets carried off by the winds. For this reason it may be said that art history is a progressive endeavour. We know more

about The Arcadian Shepherds now than we did a hundred years ago. This

knowledge is unlikely to be lost. It is equally unlikely that it never will be added to.

IV

If we accept that an adequate critical narrative about a painting must take into

consideration its complex intention?something that includes both the intention of the painter and that of an ideal viewer, but is confined to neither of these?we can perhaps arrive at a critical narrative about The Arcadian Shepherds that is

more comprehensive than existing readings. We have no reason to doubt that Poussin intended the painting to tell an allegorical story, one that he borrowed from Guercino or drew from the same source. This story is what the painting

was "intended to mean." For us to understand "how this meaning was intended to be taken," we must know something about "historical painting"?the form par excellence of narrative painting and the supreme artistic genre between the seven

teenth and early nineteenth centuries. The main principle of historical painting, known to all artists, critics and intelligent viewers of the period, is that nonsimul taneous events are portrayed by distributing them spatially across the canvas.

As F?libien says, "the [literary] historian represents successively any action he

pleases," while the painter must "join together many events occurring at various

times" (cited in L?vi-Strauss Regarder 74).17 Or as Marin translates, the histori cal painter must "displace the temporal diachronic sequences of the narrative

into a synchronie, atemporal order" (297). This gives us the key to The Arcadian Shepherds: the painting must be read

syntagmatically as well as paradigmatically; it must extend itself along the syn chronie as well as the diachronic axis. It should be noted that L?vi-Strauss does not believe that this is the right way of viewing Poussin's art. The organization of

his paintings, states the anthropologist, is "paradigmatic, not syntagmatic." Pous

sin "assembles on his canvas the elements of the problem; he does not make of

228 Peter Heehs

them incidents succeeding in time." Citing two particular works, L?vi-Strauss as

serts that Poussin's method in them is "to juxtapose possibles," and that this is "the very opposite of a narrative" {Regarder 72-73).

By thus giving exclusive importance to the structural and paradigmatic, L?vi-Strauss misses the opportunity?the possibility of which he discusses in the

works I cite in part III?to synthesize the synchronie and diachronic approaches. A hint as how to accomplish this is given by A. J. Greimas in an essay that

draws heavily on L?vi-Strauss's work on mythic narrative. Among the conse

quences of considering one "narrative element" as the transformation of another, Greimas writes, is that "it permits one to define the narrative elements them

selves not only by their paradigmatic correlation"?in other words by L?vi

Strauss's "procedure of commutation"?"but also by their placement within the

syntagmatic unity to which they belong" (37-38). Greimas is writing here in ref erence to verbal narratives, but I think the same "double definition of the narra

tive element" has application to iconographie narratives as well.

I believe the structure composed of the figures in The Arcadian Shepherds must be read successively as a transformational diachronic narrative. It unfolds

from left to right, which according to W?fflin is the normal direction for reading Western paintings, since it is the direction in which European languages are writ

ten (Carrier, "Art History" 313). In Poussin's painting this general rule is given

special force by the presence of the inscription on the tomb, which ought to be

translated: "Even in Arcadia, I"?the "I" referring to Death. This brings forward the core meaning of the picture, which, as most critics agree, is the awareness of the inevitability of death even by those who have known the joys of life. The

figures represent not different simultaneous reactions to this awareness, but the

stages of a mortal's arriving at it. First, like the shepherd with crossed legs on the

left, we regard the possibility of death with detachment. Then, like the kneeling figure, we become engrossed by the need to understand, to decipher the mystery.

When we realize the secret, that we too must die, we rise, troubled in mind like

the third shepherd, seeking elsewhere for support. This comes in the form of

Sophia, stoic Wisdom, who like the woman in Poussin's picture, offers us the

calm of her face and the strength of her hand. From the ignorant detachment of

the figure on the right, we move to the calm detachment of the Wise, an appro

priate attitude for confronting life's ultimate mystery.

ENDNOTES

1. I borrow the notion of horizontal and vertical axes from Saussure and Barthes. Saussure, intro

ducing his distinction between synchronie and diachronic linguistics, situates the one on the "axis

of simultaneities," the other on the "axis of successions" (115-17). Barthes speaks of a horizontal

narrative thread and an implicitly vertical structural axis ("Introduction" 11). In a diagram Saus

sure shows the diachronic axis as vertical and the synchronie as horizontal. Barthes inverts this.

It seems to me more natural to speak of the diachronic axis as horizontal. (It is possible that

Saussure wanted the direction to be "unnatural," that is, arbitrary.)

2. In semiotic structures meaning is not fixed; this has led some to drop the notion of meaning alto

gether, a step L?vi-Strauss never took. In his main work on narrative Barthes insists: "from the

Poussin among the Philosophers 229

beginning meaning must be the criterion of the unit. . . . Everything has meaning or nothing does" ("Introduction" 12-13).

3. I do not suggest that the critical narratives discussed below represent all possible approaches, or

that the typology presented in part I is exhaustive. Many interesting interpretations of Poussin

would be difficult to place in my framework, for example Richard W?lheim's psychoanalytic treatment in Painting as an Art (187-231). W?lheim does not mention The Arcadian Shepherds in this book.

4. Also known as Et in Arcadia Ego. Mus?e du Louvre, Paris. Oil on canvas, 85 x 121 cm. The

date is controversial; critics have suggested one as early as 1638 and as late as 1655.

5. The 1955 version is a thorough rewriting of 1936, omitting two complete sections and drawing on

the literature on the painting (Klein, Blunt, etc.) and the Arcadia question (Snell) published after

1936. A transitional article, "'Et in Arcadia Ego' et le Tombeau Parlant" (1938), deals mainly with objections raised by Weisbach in 1937.

6. For more detail see Snell 281-309. Snell cites Panofsky's first version and was cited by Panofsky in his second.

7. Weisbach for instance calls Goethe's "Auch Ich in Arcadien" a "literal translation" of the Latin

("Ein Beitrag" 127).

8. Weisbach cites the opinion of "philological authorities" that "there is no absolute impossibility, in

regard to language, to make et accord with ego" ("Arcadia" [1937] 290). The Oxford Dictionary

of Quotations translates the phrase: "And 1 too in Arcadia." The Penguin Dictionary of Quota tions follows suit. The Oxford editors, who certainly had competent Latinists at their disposal, add: "the meaning is disputed." It should not be forgotten that Latin is an inflected language in

which syntax may be changed for metrical or other reasons.

9. "M?me en Arcadie, moi, la mort, j'existe." (Even in Arcadia, I, Death, exist.) Copied in August 1993.

10. See for example Bryson {Vision 52-53). Writers both in the Anglo-Saxon and the French

semiotic/ semiological traditions recognize the distinctiveness of the iconic sign. C. S. Pierce

speaks of symbols (unmotivated signs), indexes and icons. Barthes also insists on the analogical nature of the iconic sign. Bryson considers Pierce's distinction between motivated and unmoti

vated signs a reiteration of "the archaic doctrine of the Essential Copy," which he combats.

11. L?vi-Strauss is speaking in this passage about myths; but nowhere does he endorse archetypal

iconography. It is interesting that in the same passage he concedes: "Saussure's principle of the

arbitrary character of linguistic signs certainly needs to be reviewed and corrected." In his con

versations with Charbonnier he insists on the motivated nature of the sign in representational art.

I believe that a study of the distinctive nature of the painterly sign could do much to correct the

excesses of structuralist and poststructuralist theories founded on the Saussurean dogma of the

arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign.

12. Marin's "Towards a Theory of Reading in the Visual Arts" was included in Caligram: Essays in

New Art History from France, a collection edited by Bryson.

13. I take the term "core meaning" from Jan Mukarovsky, who defines it as "a distinct signification . . . conferred by what is common to the different subjective states of consciousness provoked in

a member of a particular community by the 'thing-work'" (2). Compare Panofsky's "intrinsic

meaning" (Meaning 27-28). In writing about The Arcadian Shepherds Panofsky uses the term

"inner meaning" in much the same sense ("Conception" 224).

14. For example, Mukarovsky (6) and Bryson ("Introduction" xxviii), who insist on the priority of

semiotic structure, both admit the importance of historical factors. Panofsky's endeavour, par

ticularly in his essay on Kunstwollen, was "an attempt to balance the historical project of the art

historian with the abstract and absolute meaning of a work of art" (Hart 545). See also Podro

(61 -64), for the relation between the historical and structural approaches in Panofsky's essay.

230 Peter Heehs

15. Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln point out that the tomb and the landscape in the Louvre version

bear remarkable similarities to a tomb found near Rennes-le-Ch?teau (a photograph of which is

reproduced in the book) and the surrounding countryside. One Poussin scholar admits that the

similarities "are unlikely to be coincidental" (Wright 189); but this does not in itself lend much

support to the "Masonic" reading of the painting. (It is not impossible that the real tomb was

modelled after the one in the painting.)

16. Note that all these statements are negative. As Eco makes clear, the principle of textual economy is meant to falsify impossible readings, not verify possible ones.

17. Or as the critic Le Brun says, since "all the things [the historical painter] wishes to figure" must

occupy "only one moment," he must, "in order to represent what he took place at that time . . .

sometimes join together several incidents that preceded it" (cited L?vi-Strauss 74).

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