Brant: Dido Looks Upon the Trojan Fleet

Aeneas, who previously has been visited by a vision of Mercury (556-70), rouses his men to leave the harbors of Carthage (571-83). On the main ship, which holds Aeneas, the men row swiftly in unison to leave the shore as quickly as possible (581-3). In the upper right corner of the image, Dido watches them leave from the window of a tower. This is a departure from the text, in which Dido simply sees the empty harbor and knows they have left (586-8). The combination of the scenes makes sense if the goal is to maximize the use of illustration space, and the change is not significant enough to cause much confusion when used with the text. (Katy Purington)

Woodcut illustration from the “Strasbourg Vergil,” edited by Sebastian Brant: Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera cum quinque vulgatis commentariis expolitissimisque figuris atque imaginibus nuper per Sebastianum Brant superadditis (Strasbourg: Johannis Grieninger, 1502), fol. 226r, executed by an anonymous engraver under the direction of Brant.



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