Author unspecified, 17th century, Sylviana and Andrymart of Astrea

Oil, duplicated canvas; 177 x 126 cm.

The painting depicts a scene from Honoré d'Urfé's French novel "Astrea," published in parts between 1607 and 1627. Because of its volume and the way the plot was constructed, the novel is considered to be the first novel-river in French literature. The huge reading success it enjoyed in France and Europe also earned it the title of novel over novels. It consists of five parts and more than five thousand pages, but the common thread remains the perfect love story between the title character Astrea and Celedon. Their love adventures form a large part of this extremely dense and complex novel, which also contains various other adventures of the characters that are not related to the main story, but form the background to the lives of the main characters.
One would therefore presume that the scene depicted in the painting is an image of Astrea and Celedon. However, one does not see here the distinctive attributes with which they are depicted on the pages of 17th-century editions of the novel, as well as on engravings from the publisher's "Recueil factice d'illustrations pour L'Astrée et L'Aminte" of 1632: a shepherd's outfit with a staff and hat in Celedon's case and a dress with a shepherd's staff or country attire in Astrea's case.
On the other hand, in the third volume of the novel, we read about Silvanus and Andrymart, courtiers of King Merovingian. Most likely, they are the ones depicted in the painting, on a walk, during which Sylviana carved her name on a tree, and Andrymart, on the other hand, added the word "I love" to it. The canvas shows a fragment of the inscription on the bark. The scene is found in the novel, in Chapter 12 of Volume III.