Nicolas Poussin: A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term 1632-3 (detail)
Poussin's Arcadian paintings seem good examples of the sort of stone memorials I've been thinking about - the stone being a visual shorthand for the 17th Century cult of nostalgic classicism cf. The Arcadian Shepherds etc.
This term of Bacchus looks on, begarlanded, and challenges us to disapprove of the revels taking place before him. I am fascinated by such stone faces - challenging, authoritative, sphinx-like, inscrutable - totemic even. They bear a fellowship with the more prosaic example of lion's head door knocker such as I have painted previously:
Thomas Helyar-Cardwell Portent 24x24" oil on canvas 2009
The totem is a guardian, a prophet even. A symbol holder who also embodies the symbol it contains. These devices lurk throughout the history of genre and still life painting, picked up on later after the mania for African masks arrived at the turn of the C20th...
They suggest rites, festivals, celebration, mourning, philosophising, renewal, foreboding etc. See particularly the masks on the floor of Poussin's scene here:
Nicolas Poussin The Triumph of Pan 1636
The clay vessels and garlands littering the floor are like a scattered still life - the tranquility of which is being trampled by the orgiastic revellers in their outrageous debauch of painting's contemporary narrative.
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