The Triumph of Pan

[Dominic]

[size=85]The Triumph of Pan by Nicolas Poussin, 1636[/size]

Archetypal fantasy of reckless abandonment belonging to the High Renaissance, known to the ancients as the Dionysiac: a super-abundance of wine and food in the Classical style, not to mention that lady on the goat…

[Kriswest]

I have a mini goat named Pan, his brother wears the name Puck very well. They live up to their names very well in a goatish way. Puck leads the way in adventures and trouble while Pan wanders about just a happy little fellow following his brother if he had a flute he probably would play it. Now in that picture you posted is Pan sort of doing a Bacchus thing and passed out somewhere? I see only his flute. Gotta say; those goats don’t look too thrilled. the one she is on though must be Pan transformed look at the eyes on the goat and his mouth. Pretty detailed painting i think you could find new things for quite a while in it.

[jonquil]

I think the bottom half of the picture to the fore, the Pan part which is frenetic and dionysiac, makes a very interesting contrast to the top half of the picture which extends back to the vanishing point, with trees and sky in a peaceful pose. I have always liked Poussin, a very great and often esoteric artist.

Also, check out “Et in Arcadia Ego.”

parnasse.com/etpnt.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_in_Arcadia_ego

The phrase is usually interpreted as a memento mori - “Even in Arcadia I exist”, as if spoken by personified Death. However, Poussin’s biographer, André Félibien, interpreted it to mean that “the person buried in this tomb has lived in Arcadia”; in other words, that the person too once enjoyed the pleasures of life on earth. This reading was common in the 18th and 19th century. For example William Hazlitt wrote that Poussin “describes some shepherds wandering out in a morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this inscription, ‘I also was an Arcadian’.”[1] The former interpretation is now generally considered more likely; the ambiguity of the phrase is the subject of a famous essay by the art historian Erwin Panofsky (see References). Either way, the sentiment was meant to set up an ironic contrast between the shadow of death and the usual idle merriment that the nymphs and swains of ancient Arcadia were thought to embody.

The first chapter of Brideshead Revisited is titled: “Et in Arcadia Ego.” Just the phrasing, And in Arcadia I, evokes the melancholy of passing time and death. Yet the painting clearly shows the Neo-platonist’s fondness for esoteric meaning in the colors, the geometry, the symbolism, and the placements. I was always disappointed that Dan Brown didn’t include more of Poussin in The Da Vinci Code because I love this kind of stuff.