| At
the beginning of the XVII C it was quite common to find in pastoral painting
the Latin motto "et in Arcadia ego". According to some people, this was
introduced by B. Schedoni, to others by G. F. Barbieri ("Guercino").
However, it became popular thanks to French painter N. Poussin, who set
a real fashion all over the Europe.
Greek Arcadia was considered as the bucolic region par excellence and was symbolically adopted as such by the Academy of Arcadia, which was founded in Rome in 1690 by a group of scholars within Christina of Sweden's circle, and was located in Bosco Parrasio (Parrasio Wood), at Gianicolo's sides. The motto then appeared in the works of great poets such as Schiller and Goethe. However, there have been differing opinions on the real meaning of the phrase and over the years two main interpretations have stood out. |
According
to one it means "Also I (lived) in Arcadia" and it supposedly refers to
the nostalgia for far-away and lost happiness. According to the other the
motto could mean "Also in Arcadia I (Death) am present". The latter is
also strengthened by Schedoni and Poussin's paintings (e.g. Les bergers
d'Arcadie displayed at the Louvre), clearly hinting at death.
Childhood has often been seen as the Arcadia of man's life cycle, the time when innocence, happiness and absence of heavy thoughts rule undisputed. Or it should be so, but not always men share this fate. Some children always see and understand too much, and from very early surrender to the inability of bearing reality without escaping into (often delirous) dream. This Arcadia is bound to accompany and shape adulthood, affecting the choices made and anticipating their |
results.
A man lets his loneliness grow into an insurmountable wall of incomprehension,
that makes him feel bitter and betrayed, stranger to himself and unimportant
to others.
A child grows too precociously into a man; he has no alternative to that life, except for the good that he instinctively puts in it. He has known too early but his innocence, his lack of responsibility for the constraints imposed on him, his love of life will constitute the core of his creativity. Bosco Parrasio is still there, dividing Monteverde and Trastevere. This project stems from my friendship with painter Bruno Cattani, author of the paintings that are the underlying link of this set of photographs and who has been responsible for my initiation to the visual arts. We were both born - one thirty years after the other - on the sides of what is still the Academy of Arcadia. |
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