Venus Healing Aeneas
c. 1820
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
27 × 21.5 cm (10 5/8 × 8 1/2 in.); Framed: 39.4 × 33.7 × 7 cm (15 1/2 × 13 1/4 × 2 3/4 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
226550
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In this study for a larger painting of a scene from Virgil’s Aeneid, Merry Joseph Blondel depicted the epic poem’s protagonist, Aeneas, wounded and having dragged himself away from the battlefield. Hidden in a divine mist, the goddess Venus—Aeneas’s mother—and the river god Numicus come to his rescue. Numicus holds the hero as Venus administers a healing balm. The following lines from A. S. Kline’s translation of the poem describe the scene: This Venus brought, her face veiled in dark mist, th...