- The Winter's Tale -

Here are three paintings on pastoral themes, or on mythical themes associated with pastoral. One is earlier, two are later than Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. None is an illustration of the play, but each resonates with aspects of the play's images, ideas, scenes, sections of dialogue. Read the descriptions and click on the images to see the larger version. Briefly (two or three sentences should do it) relate an image in one of the paintings to a comparable feature of The Winter's Tale. E-mail your Workbook response to your preceptor, and use it as a stage in writing your Essay. 

 


 

Nicholas Poussin, Et in Arcadia Ego, 1630s

The shepherds and shepherdess in this painting (1630s) by Nicholas Poussin have just come across a tombstone, on which they read the inscription, "Et in Arcadia ego." This can be translated as "I too am present in Arcadia" or " I am present even in Arcadia" (Arcadia is the traditional name for the idealized landscape of pastoral). The identity of the inscription's "ego" or "I" is made plain by the skull on top of the tombstone. (Click on the detail to see the inscription and the skull .) The shepherds react with shocked urgency to this revelation about the transitoriness of human happiness. Even in pastoral's ideal landscape, we are reminded of our mortal limits. (See posting , 12/1/97, on Newsgroup, from L. Danson.)

 

 

 

Nicholas Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time, 1639

Time (at the right of the painting, playing a lyre) makes the music to which the four figures dance. The dancers have been variously interpreted: as the four seasons, in their endless round, or as four states of human life. Two putti (little cherubic figures) sit in the foreground: one holds an hourglass, the other blows a bubble, indicating the ephemeral character of happiness. The statue at the far left is Janus, the two-faced Roman god. For our purposes, we might say that he suggests two different ways of thinking about Time: its passing tells us that all things, good and bad, come to an end; in its cyclical aspect, it is a dance, in which all things are harmonized. 

 

 

Botticelli, Primavera (c. 1482)

Reading this great painting from right to left, we find Zephyr (the West Wind) transforming his bride,Chloris (the second figure on the right), into Flora (the third figure). Flora, associated with flowers and flowering, is springtime, Primavera, itself. Next to Flora is Venus with Cupid above her. This is the "good" Venus of harmony and married love (we know that from her matronly posture) rather than the "bad" Venus of lust. Next to her, dancing in an endless circle, are the Three Graces. The traditional figures have been variously interpreted: in Botticelli's painting they may represent Chastity (the one with her back to us), Beauty, and Pleasure. The Dance of the Three Graces can also be a figure of the harmonious circle of true generosity: giving, receiving, and giving again in the dance of reciprocity. The figure at the left is Mercury. It's hard to see, but he's got a wand (the "caduceus") and with it he is dispelling clouds that block Love's view of the highest ideal sphere. In this painting, the erotic power signified by Venus is harmonized with the yearly cycle and the fruitfulness of spring.