ICONOGRAPHY III: The Dance to the Music of Time
Giulio Rospigliosi began his career as professor of theology and canon law at the University of Pisa. From 1632-36, he served as the Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura and Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites under Urban VIII . An accomplished poet and dramatist, Rospigliosi composed the libretto for Virgilio Mazzochi’s comic opera, L’Egisto, o Chi Soffre, Speri. This Neoplatonic allegory based on a novella by Boccaccio had its debut performance at the Palazzo Barberini 1637, and was published with revisions in 1639. Rospigliosi went on to serve as papal nuncio in Spain, was raised to the cardinalate and from 1667-69 reigned as Pope Clement IX.
While occupied with the development and production of the opera, Rospigliosi commissioned a large cabinet painting by Nicolas Poussin. In his biography of Poussin, Gian Pietro Bellori refers to the painting as Il Ballo della Vita Umana. Known since 1913 as the Dance to the Music of Time, it represents four people dancing in a circle outdoors as winged figure plays a lyre. Bellori categorizes the picture as a morale poesia, or one of a small group of classicizing pictures by Poussin in which “le favole esposte riferiremo alcuni concetto morali espressi in pittura.” Bellori also identifies the author of its iconographic program: “Il soggetto di questa morale poesia fu data al pittore da Papa Clemente IX.” Rospigliosi, it seems, reprised his role as librettist, composing a learned text intended to impose a discursive meaning on a non-discursive medium.*
That discursive meaning is clearly allegorical. According to Bellori, the four female figures represent the seasons and the revolving fortunes of human life. Beginning with the impovished, barefoot figure of Autumn who faces away from the viewer, the dancers become richer as the seasons progress, culminating in the voluptuous and sumptuously-dressed and bejeweled figure of Summer, who makes eye contact with the viewer. This cyclical movement is rhythmically ordered by the music played by Time. A putto equipped with an hour glass and another blowing soap bubbles (a standard emblemof the transience of life, provide the moral dimension to the allegory. Finally, the appearance of Aurora, Apollo and figures representing the Hours and the zodiac serve as the cosmic context of the concetto.
Unlike the published libretto for L’Egisto, Rospigliosi’s iconographic program is known only through Poussin’s painting. How much and which parts of it were dictated by Rospigliosi and what parts Poussin was left free to invent is unclear. The general theme expressed through allegory was probably the invention of the patron. The landscape setting and warm afternoon lighting are purely Poussin’s. Details of costume were probably devised by the painter. Poussin excelled at the representation of choreography—the dance depicted in the Adoration of the Golden Calf (1633/37) strongly resembles the that of the Ballo—so the circular footwork, which complements the general theme, might have been his decision. (It should be noted that Malcolm Bull dismisses Bellori's account to argue that Poussin devised the allegory of the seasons and Rospigliosi devised the wealth and fortune allegory after the picture was completed.)
Poussin evidently found the concetto worthy of further development. Bellori mentions that after fulfilling the commission, Poussin painted two pictures, the iconographies of which extend Rospigliosi’s theme. The first, referred to by Bellori as La Verità Scoperta dal Tempo, elaborates on the active role of Time. For the second, entitled La Felicità Soggetto alla Morte, Poussin revisits the fable of the Arcadian Shepherds stumbling across a tomb, which he had painted in the 1620s.
Panofsky argues that Rospigliosi had devised the theme and the cryptic inscription on the tomb for Guercino's Arcadian Shepherds, and that Bellori's claim that Poussin continued the theme of the Ballo meant that Rospigliosi requested and Poussin painted an updated version of the Et in Arcadia Ego concetto. It would s equally plausible that having previously painted the subject, Poussin may very well have chosen it himself.
Whatever the exact circumstances were, Poussin’s response to the theme of the Ballo is unambiguous. Just as he purged the subject of the rushing movement and drama of discovery of Guercino's and his own earlier versions, he replaced the pounding rhythms and motion of the Ballo with silence, stasis, and contemplation. Emblematic of this revision is the displacement of the ephemeral, circular dance, laden with life-affirming symbolism, by a huge, rectilinear, immovable stone monument.
Gianpietro Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (Rome, 1672).
Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods (Oxford, 2005).
Louis Marin, “Toward a Theory of Reading in the Visual Arts: Poussin’s The Arcadian Shepherds,” The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton, 1980).
Erwin Panofsky, "Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and the Elegaic Tradition" Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York, 1955).
