03 — ARTWORK
Aeneas and Achates on the Libyan Coast
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 58,7 x 87,6 cm
- TYPE
- Mythological
PALETTE
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- FILE
- 1063 × 701 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
Aeneas and Achates on the Libyan Coast c. 1520 Oil on canvasA woven cloth used as a support for painting. The best-quality canvas is made of linen; other materials used are cotton, hemp, and jute. It is now so familiar a material that the word 'canvas' has become almost a synonym for an oil painting, but it was not until around 1500 that it began to rival the wooden panel (which was more expensive and took longer to prepare) as the standard support for movable paintings (the transition came later in Northern Europe than in Italy). Canvas is not suitable for painting on until it has been coated with a ground, which isolates the fabric from the paint; otherwise it will absorb too much paint, only very rough effects will be obtainable, and parts of the fabric may be rotted by the pigments. It must also be made taut on a stretcher or by some other means., 58,7 x 87,6 cm National Galleryan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen). of Art, Washington
Also commissioned by Alfonso d'Este for the Alabaster Chamber, this small canvas formed part of a series of ten paintings -- all of the same height and all by Ferrara's court artist Dosso Dossi and his brother Battista Dossi -- that ran continuously around the upper walls of the room, forming a friezea horizontal band of architectural decoration; in a classical entablature, the horizontal member band between the architrave and the cornice. above the large canvases.
The series depicted the adventures of the Trojan hero Aeneas, venerated in Italy since antiquity as a founder of the Roman state. Aeneas' wanderings around the Mediterranean after the sack of Troy and his rise to kingship in Italy were immortalized in The Aeneid, an epic poem written by Virgil (70-19 B.C.).
Dosso's painting represents the episode when Aeneas and his friend Achates were shipwrecked off the coast of Libya and cast up at Carthage. The similarity of this picture's vivid green pigments to some of the repainted foliage in The Feast of the Gods implies that Dosso could have been responsible for the first alteration to Bellini's masterpieceA term now loosely applied to the finest work by a particular artist or to any work of art of acknowledged greatness or of preeminence in its field. Originally it meant the piece of work by which a craftsman, having finished his training, gained the rank of'master' in his guild..
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r4b2f6f2483ca81,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Aeneas and Achates on the Libyan Coast by DOSSI, Dosso},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-09},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/dossi-dosso-ra092596c9433d5/aeneas-and-achates-on-the-libyan-coast-r4b2f6f2483ca81},
urldate = {2026-09-09},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-09. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
