Aeneas and a Sibyl in the Underworld

In the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid, the Trojan hero Aeneas asks the Sibyl of Cumae, a prophetess who lived on the coast near Naples, to lead him down into the world of the dead so that he can speak with his father once more. Their way in lay beside Lake Avernus, a crater lake close to Cumae that the Romans took for a gate to the underworld. Jan Brueghel had lived in Naples himself at the start of his Italian years, around 1590. He painted this small picture, about 36 by 52 centimetres, shortly after 1600, back home in Antwerp. It travelled east early. By 1619 it was already recorded in Vienna, six years before the painter's death.