In Pastoral Concert, how is the Location of the Description elucidated?
The painting is understood to be a pastoral landscape in the Italian countryside. It is not explicitly stated or described by historical documents exactly where this painting is set. Still, as it comes from Venice, there is a high possibility in the Venetian countryside. Venetian painting's major specialty is landscape paintings, specifically idyllic landscapes such as Locus amoenus that posit subjects into the Venetian Countryside. This painting shows a meadow with a landscape that has broad slopes down to a water source. Intermixed with this idyllic landscape with buildings that match the typical town/villa style of the 16th century Venice city-state.Christiane Joost-Gaugier suggests that the painting's landscape was a fictional setting inspired by Virgil's Eclogues, specifically numbers three and eight. The painting's landscape details suggest this particular epilogue because the Shepard's appearance with bagpipes alludes to a possible scene depicting a singing contest of Theocritus from one of Horace's Odes or Virgil's Eclogues (3,7).
Venice Horace Virgil Eclogues Venetian painting Locus amoenus Theocritus three eight Christiane Joost-Gaugier