Aeneas and Achates wafted in a Cloud before Dido, Queen of Carthage, with Cupid at her Feet
Jacopo Amigoni (Naples c.1682 - Madrid 1752)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1732 - 1739
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2240 x 3130 x 100 mm; 71 kg (Weight)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 772276
Caption
As told in the Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 1, Venus, goddess of love and mother of the mortal Aeneas - pious Trojan war hero and ancestor of the future founders of the Roman empire - causes Dido, Queen of Carthage, to fall in love with him. The presence of Cupid, with his bow and quiver of arrows represents this. In a later scene Aeneas introduces him, disguised as his son Ascanius by Venus, who is wishing to protect her son from Juno, queen of the gods, to whom both the Greeks and Dido were allied. Aeneas has arrived on the coast of North Africa, having been put off his course to Italy by a storm instigated by Juno. Hidden in a cloud devised by his mother though, he wafts into Dido’s palace accompanied by Achates and an attendant bearing gifts and reveals himself to the awestruck Carthaginian queen and her handmaidens.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Aeneas and Achates wafted in a Cloud before Dido, Queen of Carthage, with Cupid at her Feet by Jacopo Amigoni (Naples 1682 – Madrid 1752), circa 1732. An enthroned Dido, wearing a gold dress over white, is sitting within a tempietto (small temple) space; Cupid, as a small child, with a quiver of arrows and a bow, at her feet and a female in blue behind her and another attendant on her left. Aeneas is accompanied by his fellow traveller Achates, in plumed helmets, and to the right of the scene is a male in Roman military costume, referring to the future kingdom, not yet founded. When Amigoni worked in England between 1729 and 1739 he painted murals in a number of houses, the only extensive surviving scheme of which is at Moor Park, Herts. This picture is his largest painting other than a mural, and was probably made for a specific location in Newburgh Priory, Yorkshire, when this was partially rebuilt by the 4th Viscount Fauconberg (1699-1774) around 1732. In view of the picture's provenance, however, there is always the possibility that it was painted in Spain, to which Amigoni went from England, and where the uncle of Sir George Wombwell, 2nd Bt, who married a daughter and co-heir of the 2nd and last Earl Fauconberg, was a merchant in Alicante.
Provenance
From the Wombwell Collection, Newburgh Priory; accepted in lieu of tax by HM Treasury, and allocated to the National Trust for Osterley in 1995
Credit line
Osterley Park, Wombwell Collection, Newburgh Priory (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Jacopo Amigoni (Naples c.1682 - Madrid 1752), publisher