G9087: Aeneas Carries Anchises from the Burning City of Troy

Identification and Creation

Object Number

G9087

People

Attributed to Giulio Bonasone, Italian (Bologna c. 1510 - after 1576)
After Raphael, Italian (Urbino, Italy 1483 - 1520 Rome, Italy)

Title

Aeneas Carries Anchises from the Burning City of Troy

Classification

Prints

Work Type

print

Date

c. 1545

Culture

Italian

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/182780

Physical Descriptions

Technique

Engraving

Dimensions

plate: 22.6 x 16.6 cm (8 7/8 x 6 9/16 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• Signed: Ivl Bonasone
• inscription: on a rock in the near-ground landscape, printer's ink and watercolor, engraved, redrawn by hand, signed: Ivl / Bonasone
• legend: lower margin, printer's ink, engraved, Latin: HAEC EST ILIACOS PIETAS SPECTATA PER IGNES ? CUM VERITA EST PATRIOS LAEDERER FLAMAS DEOS [roughly: "Here at Troy is familial duty veritably proven / the father[land, ancestry] stricken by the flames of God."]

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gray Collection of Engravings Fund

Accession Year

2000

Object Number

G9087

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary

Although the composition reproduces figures from Raphael's "Fire in the Borgo," from the Stanza del' Incendio in the Vatican, the subject returns to the classical type that was Raphael's (and Pope Leo X's) inspiration: devotion to "pater" and to "patria" in war, shown by Aeneas in rescuing his father Anchises and his son Ascanius from the burning city of Troy. The group of three figures is the principal motif of the left side of Rapahel's fresco. Behind them rise suggestive columns of smoke, although there is no landscape and townscape within the constricted space of the painting. For a discussion of this motif and the subject of the Raphael painting more generally, see Paul Joannides, "The Drawings of Raphael" (1983), pp.104-105, cat. no. 367, in which Anchises is identified with Cosimo de' Medici "Il Vecchio" and Ascanius with Giovanni de' Medici, that is, Leo X. For the literary source of the classical subject, see Virgil's "Aeneid," Book 2, lines 705-724.

Verification Level