The Landing of Aeneas at Pallanteum, 1675 (oil on canvas)

The scene shows the legendary founder of Rome about to disembark upstream on the River Tiber some time after his flight from the fall of Troy. As described in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VIII, the Trojan Aeneas stands on the prow of his ship, offering an olive branch of peace to Latin King Evander and his son, Pallas. Don Gasparo, who commissioned the painting, was the son of a Roman nobleman, Angelo Albertoni and married into the Altieri family. The flag on the second ship bears the coat of arms of the family after which the picture and its pendant, The Father of Psyche sacrificing at the Temple of Apollo, painted earlier in 1662, are named. The Altieris claimed to be descended from Aeneas. In the last decade of his career Claude depicted scenes from the Aeneid in six paintings. The elongated figures of Aeneas and his companions are characteristic of Claude’s later style. He was, however, less concerned with the subject than with capturing subtle effects of light, in this case in the Campagna landscape around Rome. Claude’s landscapes were much sought after by British collectors. Both pictures arrived in England in 1799 with a special naval escort and were bought by William Beckford, one of the most discerning collectors of the age. Beckford sold the paintings in 1808 for the huge sum of 12,000 guineas – the highest sum ever paid for paintings on canvas at that time.