Aeneas and Dido (Sketch)

This small canvas, about 35 by 45 centimetres, is Guérin's oil sketch for his large Aeneas and Dido, the painting that was a hit at the Salon of 1817 and also hangs in the Louvre. The story is from Virgil's Aeneid. The Trojan prince, shipwrecked on the coast of Carthage, tells Queen Dido how his city fell, and as he talks she falls in love with him. In the next book that love ends with Aeneas sailing away at the gods' command and Dido dying on a pyre.

The arrangement is already settled here. Aeneas sits on the left in a helmet with a tall red crest, one arm over the back of his chair, the other held out towards the queen, who reclines on a couch with the boy against her and her sister leaning in behind. The brush moves quickly and the paint is thin.

Another oil sketch, long linked with the same picture, was left by Guérin to his pupil Alphonse Périn. It went to the Prado in 1887 and spent about a century in the town hall of La Orotava, on Tenerife. This one came to the Louvre as a bequest in 1891.