Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 28 -- Et In Arcadia Ego
Poussin was renowned for his Arcadian settings, even when the subject didn't fit, an example
being that of rendering the Nile as a visual Greece in "The Finding of Moses" (1647).
The entirely-predictable focus is on women exclaiming over the discovery of the baby, but to the
right, in shadow rather than highlighted and sitting rather than standing, Alpheus leans again on
the spilling urn, the Arethusa Fountain. Having delivered Moses to where he will change history,
the river god retreats. A sphinx stares
beyond the canvas. The artist knows that
unanswerable questions lie behind
commandments inscribed in stone.
Rene d'Anjou, King of Naples (1438 -1442)
and titular King of Jerusalem (1438-1480)
used the theme of an underground River
Alpheus to represent a subculture of
Arcadian esotericism, unlike the Garden of
Eden, free of Judeo-Christian constraints.
D’Anjou's Les Coeur d’Amours Espris
(1457), depicted the fountain of the
underground stream flowing from a
tombstone.
In 1945, Evelyn Waugh sub-titled the first part of Brideshead Revisited "Et In Arcadia Ego,"
referring to his protagonist's blissful and innocent interbellum years as an undergraduate student
at Oxford University.
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