Juno Commands Aeolus to Release the Winds

Artist J. d'Audenaerde (French, active ca. 1772)

Date1727

CultureFrench

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineBequest of John Ringling, 1936

Object numberSN374

Almost nothing is known of the artist who signed this painting, except that he was active in Lille, in northern France. In this scene from Virgil’s Aeneid, the goddess Juno urges Aeolus, keeper of the winds, to create a storm that will destroy the hero Aeneas’s fleet. Though this work predates the Neoclassical movement of the later 18th century, its subject evidences interest—already in the 1720s—in depictions of classical literature. Such interest in ancient sources, on the part of both patrons and artists, would grow throughout the century.

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