Aeneas’ ill-fated and brief affair with Queen Dido of Carthage, past the Cercopes who had been turned into monkeys, and on to the Sibyl to take him to visit his father in the underworld.
Perrier
A diversion to see the Cumaean Sibyl at Lake Avernus and visit the Underworld produced some of the finest narrative landscapes.
Aeneas flees the burning city of Troy with his wife, father and young son. But his wife falls back and is lost. He builds ships and sails on to Delos.
How paintings of the Aeneid, Jason and the Golden Fleece, and Homer’s Odyssey match up with the basic plot of The Quest.
Great paintings of the masters telling Virgil’s epic of the life of Aeneas. From his conception and the fall of Troy, to his time with Dido in Carthage.
Before folk history changed with the concept of human evolution, caves were sacred places inhabited by hermits, or figures from myth.
Paintings from 1750 on didn’t show ‘Christian’ sibyls, but returned to their classical meaning. Then came Turner’s marvellous narrative landscapes.
The crusaders start their march down the Mediterranean coast towards Jerusalem. Gabriel appears to Godfrey, and a young couple are saved from being burned at the stake by a ‘pagan’ woman knight.
Two interlinked stories about the Sibyl, who will live for a thousand years but age until she is just a voice. Painted by Turner (three magnificent works shown), and Claude.
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