Brant: Pius Aeneas

    Aeneas holds the hand of Ascanius and carries Anchises on his shoulders (707-10; 721-3) as they walk away from the city. Anchises carries the Penates (717), represented by an odd looking miniature bust. Behind Aeneas, Creusa stands with two attendants, not yet lost in the crowd, but standing far enough away from her husband to foreshadow the separation that happens in lines 730-46. Troy continues to burn in the background. (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. 180r, executed by an anonymous engraver under the direction of Brant.

    Comments

    Sebastian Brant (1458–1521) was a humanist scholar of many competencies. Trained in classics and law at the University of Basel, Brant later lectured in jurisprudence there and practiced law in his native city of Strasbourg. While his satirical poem Das Narrenschiff won him considerable standing as a writer, his role in the transmission of Virgil to the Renaissance was at least as important. In 1502 he and Strasbourg printer Johannes Grüninger produced a major edition of Virgil’s works, along with Donatus’ Life and the commentaries of Servius, Landino, and Calderini, with more than two hundred woodcut illustrations. (Annabel Patterson)

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    Date
    1502
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    Location
    University of Heidelberg
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