ET IN ARCADIA EGO

The porcelain group is a paraphrase of the modern idealized image – the carefree life and immortality of dolls.  Et in Arcadia ego is a 1637–38 painting by Nicolas Poussin, the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style. The literal translation of “Et in Arcadia Ego” is “Even in Arcadia, there am I”. Poussin’s earliest biographer, Giovanni Pietro Bellori, understood the “I” of the phrase to refer to Death, thus making the painting a memento mori, reminding the viewer that even in the blissful utopia of Arcadia, death still exists.