Nicolas Poussin's The Arcadian Shepherds

This paper will provide a visual analysis of The Arcadian Shepherds, a painting by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). The subject of this study is the first version of the work, painted by Poussin in the late 1620s. Although Poussin was primarily known for his use of the classical style, this early work shows the influences of both the baroque style and the Venetian school, which was led by Titian.

According to de la Croix and Tansey, Poussin was a key figure in establishing the classical style in French painting, a style noted for its "rational order and stability."1 Wilkin claims that Poussin's work represents the "High Art" of the classical style, in that it presents "elevated and learned themes with great formal rigor and scrupulous evocation of the antique."2 In addition, Wilkin points out that Poussin's paintings show the "order, discipline, accuracy, amplitude, clarity, severity, ambition, certitude," which are characteristic of the classical style.3 Poussin developed his sense of classicism while living in Rome. Although he was born in France, Poussin traveled to Rome at the age of thirty, and he lived there for the rest of his life. While in Rome, he was influenced by the ancient and Renaissance art that surrounded him. In addition, he was influenced by the work of Raphael, a painter who had lived in the city a century before. Raphael was known for using balanced proportions in his paintings. Imitating this style, Poussin became a founder of late seventeenth-c

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us debt to the Venetians."7 Regarding the paintings of this period, Wilkin notes: "The golden light, the blurred landscapes and luminous skies, the full-fleshed, softly modeled gods and mortals, the warm, radiant color all testify to how much the young French painter learned from Titian and his circle."8 In order to completely analyze the visual elements of Poussin's painting, it is important to also consider the iconography of the work. In essence, iconography refers to the symbolic meanings of the visual elements within a painting. In the words of Pierre Rosenberg, chief curator at the Louvre, a great deal of the current research in studies of Poussin's work is in the field of "iconography, in all its variety: covering the artist's literary and visual sources."9 Symbolism was important to Poussin because he was interested in making philosophical statements with the images in his paintings. Even in his arcadian scenes, in which fantasy landscapes were depicted, Poussin sought to make statements "about the here and now."10 Often, the iconography of his work is very intricate, with many details that must be taken into consideration. As a result, "we must read Poussin's dense, complex images sequentially, incident by i

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