Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Unable to open [object Object]: HTTP 0 attempting to load TileSource: https://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/iiif/17358168/info.json
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
This object does not yet have a description.

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

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

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

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu