Aeneas Telling Dido of the Misfortunes of Troy

Guérin signed this canvas in 1815, the year of Waterloo, and the public first saw it at the Salon of 1817, under the restored King Louis XVIII. The story is Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas, shipwrecked on the coast of Carthage, sits on the left telling Queen Dido how Troy fell, with a statue of Neptune and his trident behind him. Dido reclines on a couch in white, holding a boy who looks like Aeneas's young son Ascanius. In Virgil he is really Cupid, sent in the child's shape by Venus so that the queen will fall in love as she embraces him, and Guérin lets him glance out at us. Her sister Anna leans on the back of the couch, listening. The state bought the painting in 1818 and hung it in the Luxembourg palace, where France showed the work of living artists.