Abstract

Landscape with a man killed by a snake, painted by Poussin in 1648, gave rise to numerous different readings since those proposed by Felibien, Fenelon or Diderot ; those readings suggest either a poetical source or an engraving from which it is held to draw its inspiration in order to account for the identity either of the dead character or the snake's ; but none of them seems to settle the question. This paper analyses the interpretation put forward by Helene Bouchilloux, who proposes to identify the dead character as Narcissus and the snake as Python. Poussin is supposed to have staged, through the death of Narcissus, the "downfall" of a barren love, together with that of the false definition of the art of painting embodied in Caravaggio's work. This hypothesis, albeit tempting, is nevertheless fraught with methodological difficulties, both with respect to the way Ovid's text is to be read, and the comparative approach to several of Poussin's paintings it draws on, so that it might fall prey to overinterpretation.