Arcadian Landscape

Nicolas-Didier Boguet was one of the leading French classical landscape artists working in Italy around the turn of the nineteenth century. Although he trained as a history painter, he established his reputation in Italy as a painter of landscapes.

This canvas depicts an Arcadian landscape with shepherds playing pipes, resting on the banks of a stream, with mountains beyond. It is from Boguet’s first Roman period (1789-1797), during which time he often included episodes from Roman history and mythology. Here, he illustrates a scene from Virgil’s fifth Eclogue in which two shepherds, Menalcus and Mopsus, stumble upon the tomb of Daphnis, a famed poet and Sicilian shepherd known for Bacchic revelry. The Latin inscription on the tomb is Virgil’s fifth Eclogue (V, 43-44).