Aeneas, prince of Troy, dressed here in an orange cloak, left his native city and arrived with his father, son, and companions on the island of Delos, home of the sun god Apollo. Anius, the King of Delos, dressed in white, gestures to an olive and palm in the centre of the painting, two trees sacred to Apollo.
The domed temple of Apollo in the background is based on the Pantheon in Rome, the city Aeneas later founds and where he settles with his family. The golden eagles on the entrance of the temple may allude to Apollo’s father, Jupiter, and the Roman Empire, which adopted the bird as its emblem. Claude combines architecture he had seen in and around Rome with imaginary forms to create an idealised scene inspired by Roman antiquity.
The subject of this painting is included in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This episode was rarely painted during the seventeenth century, yet it is the first of six scenes from the story of Aeneas that Claude painted during the last ten years of his life.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Humphrey Wine, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth Century French Paintings’, London 2001; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters: In Which is Included a Short Biographical Notice of the Artists, with a Copious Description of Their Principal Pictures […], vol. 2, London 1830
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
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