8
The Aeneid in the 1530s:
Reading with the Limoges Enamels1
Phillip John Usher
In the early 1530s an unknown artist in Limoges,2 working in a style similar
to that of Jean Pénicaud, produced a series of at least eighty-two enamels
illustrating episodes from the Aeneid, a beautiful set of images whose value
is also the insight they provide into what the Aeneid meant to contemporary
French readers.3 The enamels illustrate scenes drawn from all books except
1 I should like to offer warm thanks to Barnard College librarian Heidi Winston for
drawing my attention to the Frick Reference Library’s file on the enamels discussed in
this article. My thanks, too, to the staff of the Frick and of Columbia’s Rare Book and
Manuscript Library. Thanks, also, to Susan P. Johnson for assistance with Servius’ syntax
and to Penelope Meyers for valuable assistance in final editing.
2 For a history of possible but rejected attributions, see Jean-Joseph Marquet de
Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux limousins à sujets tirés de l’Énéide,” Bulletin de la Société
de l’Histoire d’Art français (1912): 6–51, pp. 20–2. Museum collections (such as the
Louvre in Paris or the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK) generally refer to the artist
as the Master of the Aeneid (or Maître de l’Enéide).
3 There may be more enamels as yet undocumented. The number was set for many
years at sixty-nine. Eighty-two is the latest count (see Sophie Baratte, “La Série de
plaques du maître de l’Enéide,” Etudes d’histoire de l’art offertes à Jacques Thirion,
Des premiers temps chrétiens au XXe siècle (Paris: Ecole des chartes, 2001), pp. 133–48,
p. 133). Although unsigned and undated, the production can be dated approximately to
1530 because of a technical feature, namely the use of fondant (a colourless translucent
enamel) in place of thicker purplish enamel used previously. (Bernard Rackham,
“Limoges Enamels of the Aeneid Series at Alnwick Castle,” The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs, 38 (1921): 238–43). The enamels are unlikely to date from much after 1530
as it is at about this time that Italian woodcuts began to circulate in Limoges. It would be
somewhat unexpected for an artist to select the ‘old style’ Brant illustrations over newer
Italian style ones. Moreover, while Brant’s illustrations were taken up in editions of Virgil
published in 1517 (Opera Virgiliana published by Jacobus Sacrobosco in Lyon) and 1529
(by Jean Crespin, again in Lyon), it is unlikely the illustrator used these as a basis: for one
thing, the inscriptions on the woodblock had, by this time, become incomplete, but the
enamels show no such imperfections (Breck, “The Aeneid Enamels,” The Metropolitan
Musem of Art Bulletin, 20 [1925]: 95–8, p. 98). Other editions, not published in Lyon, also
used the Brant woodcuts (see Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 14).
162 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
the last three (10–12), suggesting that production was interrupted for a reason
so far lost to history.4 The series is unique for the period in its extensive and
methodical reproduction of episodes from a single work of literature. Approx-
imately uniform in size (on average 22cm x 20cm), the enamel plaques are
richly and deeply coloured, with intense blues, greens and brownish purples
predominating, complemented here and there by occasional flourishes of
gold, such as for depicting stars in the sky. Although parts of the series can
be viewed relatively easily at the Louvre and at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York, the rest of the enamels are spread out among various public
and private collections around the world. Until a full catalogue with repro-
ductions is available, any interpretation (including this one) is necessarily
partial and imperfect. In what follows, I should nevertheless like to adopt a
point made by Christopher Baswell in respect of Virgil manuscripts and to
see the Limoges enamels as “potential sites of contest between conflicting
readerly groups, preoccupations and demands.”5 In a wide sense, then, the
goal here will be to ask what these enamels can tell us about contemporary
readings of Virgil’s epic. In addition, it is thus worth noting two specific axes
of influence and potential contest related directly to the pictorial arts.
Firstly, the Limoges enamels, while unique, extend a tradition of Virgilian
illustration begun in Italy. In the Quattrocento, Virgilian themes were popular
in the decorative arts6 and were sometimes included in objects like marriage
chests (cassoni) or embedded in wall panelling.7 Still, extensive Aeneid cycles
“remained a comparative rarity in Renaissance mural art” even through the
“same was not true of representations of individual episodes.”8 Marcello
Fagiolo has detailed the main Aeneid cycles from the early sixteenth up to
the eighteenth century9 and, more recently, Erika Langmuir has detailed three
Aeneid cycles in wall paintings prior to the 1540s, one executed by Dosso
Dossi c. 1520 for the studio of Alfonso d’Este in Ferrara, one by Perino del
Vaga tentatively begun in 1527 but only completed c. 1539 and comprising
4 Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 23.
5 Christopher Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the
Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 7.
6 Paul Schubring, Cassoni; truhen und truhenbilder der italienischen frührenaissance.
Ein beitrag zur profanmalerei im quattrocento (Leipzig: K.W. Hiersemann, 1915), pp.
193 et seq. Quoted by Erika Langmuir, “Arma Virumque … Nicolò dell’Abate’s Aeneid
gabinetto for Scandiano,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 39 (1976):
151–70, p. 158, n. 32.
7 Roberto Longhi, Officina Ferrarese 1934 (Florence: Sansoni, 1956), p. 18, plates
38 and 39. See Philippe Verdier, Catalogue of the Painted Enamels of the Renaissance
(Baltimore MD: The Trustees, Walters Art Gallery, 1967), pp. 75–89. (See also Langmuir,
“Arma virumque,” p. 158, n. 34.)
8 Langmuir, “Arma virumque,” p. 158.
9 Marcello Fagiolo, Virgilio nell’arte e nella cultura europea: Roma-Biblioteca
nazionale centrale, 24 settembre/24 novembre 1981 (Rome: De Luca, 1981), pp. 119–93,
on the “cicli iconografici sull’Eneide” (iconographic cycles based on the Aeneid).
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 163
five Dido and Aeneas frescoes for the Palazzo Massimo delle Colonne and
finally Giulio Romano’s decoration of the Sala di Troia of the ducal palace
in Mantua.10 These would be followed, of course, by Nicolò dell’Abate’s
more famous Aeneid Scandiano gabinetto. While the Limoges enamels find
their origin in this Italian vogue, their production remains peculiar to 1530s
France.
A second axis of influence and contest is provided by the fact that the
designs of the Limoges enamels are based on a German edition of Virgil’s
Opera published in Strasbourg in 1502 by Johannis Grüninger,11 with illustra-
tions designed by Sebastian Brant.12 A large 450-leaf folio in the definite style
of Northern humanism, it is indeed a remarkable tome. Brant had somewhat
of a clean canvas upon which to work,13 for most medieval manuscripts of
Virgil were not illustrated, although vernacular adaptations of Virgil (such
as the Roman d’Enéas) often were.14 Still, Grüninger’s edition demonstrated
a new approach and exerted great and long-lasting influence over almost all
illustrated editions of Virgil,15 perhaps as late as Sebastiaen Vrancx’s 1615
illustrations, and at least – as we shall see later – until the mid sixteenth
century.16 Various choices made by Brant demonstrate a clear appropriation
of Virgil. Virgil’s characters, for example, are most often dressed in contem-
porary German clothes and are situated within landscapes that recall Northern
Europe. Some wear turbans, no doubt to suggest their foreignness. As the text
itself explains, the goal was to make Virgil accessible to uneducated readers:
“Pictura agresti voluit Brant atque tabellis / Edere eum [=Virgilium] indoctis
rusticolisque viris” (Brant wished to publish him [=Virgil] with bucolic
10 Langmuir, “Arma virumque,” pp. 158–60. On the cycles by Dossi and Perino del
Vaga, see Fagiolo, Virgilio nell’arte, pp. 120–2 and 141–3.
11 On Grüninger, see Paul Kristeller, Die Strassburger Bücher-Illustration im XV. und
im Anfange des XVI (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1888).
12 A useful introduction to this edition is provided by Theodore K. Rabb, “Sebastian
Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” Princeton University Library Chronicle,
21 (1960): 187–99, to which I owe various details in the present paragraph.
13 See inter alia Rabb, “Sebastian Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,”
p. 195.
14 See Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, pp. 21–30.
15 Theodore K. Rabb notes that the edition “has a considerable influence on almost
everyone who wished to illustrate the same subject during the following half century”
(“Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 196). Rabb does underline
the existence of a parallel tradition of illustration which began with the 1507 Venice edition
(p. 197). For further reflection on the importance of the Strasbourg edition, see Lothar
Freung’s entries on “Aeneas” and “Aeneis” in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte,
ed. Otto Schmitt (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1937), v. 1, p. 687; Kristeller, Die Strassburger
Bücher-Illustration, pp. 32–4; and Vladimiro Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento italiano
(Trento : Università degli studi di Trento, 2000), v. 2, p. 389–90, p. 436.
16 See Rabb, “Sebastian Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 196.
On Sebastiaen Vrancx’s new approach to illustrating the Aeneid, see Louisa Wood Ruby,
“Sebastiaen Vrancx as Illustrator of Virgil’s Aeneid,” Master Drawings, 28 (1990): 54–73.
164 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
Figure 1: The Judgment of Paris: Paris, Venus, Juno, and Pallas
pictures and drawings for uneducated and rustic men).17 The volume clearly
moves the characters closer to, or further away from, the place of production:
on the one hand, it belongs to what has been called a tradition of “visual
exoticism;”18 on the other, it clearly Germanizes the characters and land-
scapes. One modification that is immediately obvious between the German
17 From a poem included at the end of the edition. Quoted by Rabb in “Sebastian
Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 189.
18 Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, p. 29.
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 165
Figure 2: The Judgment of Paris: Paris, Venus, Juno, and Pallas
166 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
woodcuts and the French enamels is that the latter, although still clearly
dominated by Brant’s original style, demonstrate the classicizing influence
of Renaissance Italy which was spreading throughout France at just this time.
As one museum catalogue author neatly summarized, “the Gothicism of the
whole” is interrupted by a “token of incipient classical taste.”19 This is most
clearly obvious in the depictions of various naked female figures, beginning
with Venus, Juno and Pallas on what was the title page of the 1502 Grüninger
edition. Placing the two stylizations of the goddess side by side (Figures 1
and 2) is an eloquent demonstration of the change. The narrative is the same
in both images: Paris offers the apple to Venus; at the latter’s feet are three
doves. At Juno’s feet is a peacock and in her hand a sceptre; Pallas, clad in
armour, has an owl at her left foot.20 Aesthetically, the three goddesses are
quite different, however: compared with the woodcut, the Limoges Venus,
Juno and Pallas possess a strikingly neoclassic style.21 The French reader has
before him female figures much closer to those of Botticelli than to those in
Brant’s original depiction.
Similar classicization is visible in many other enamels, for example in B36
where Venus and Juno give their support to the love of Dido and Aeneas and
in B66 where Alecto recounts her mission to Juno. It is obvious from such
changes that the Limoges enamellers wanted to appropriate and reconfigure
the Gothic illustrations in such a way as to make them more appealing to a
French audience beginning to be aware of the more generous and soft female
bodies appearing in Italian art.22
The Limoges enamels thus have genealogical ties with both Italian art
(the specific tradition of Virgilian illustration and the more general classical
nature of contemporary painting) and German book illustration. Of interest
here is how these various influences are incorporated or questioned by the
French enamellers and on what a close reading of the images can tell us about
what the Aeneid meant in 1530s France.
A Reading Lesson at Apollo’s Temple
The illustrations of Aeneas and his companions at the temple of Apollo at
Cumae offer a visual support to the famous moment of ecphrasis wherein
19 Verdier, Catalogue of the Painted Enamels, p. 76.
20 Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 191.
21 Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” notes that: “L’émailleur a trouvé … que les trois
déesses manquaient de charme et de grâce, et il les a remplacées par trois figures d’un
style beaucoup plus élégant, imprégné de classicisme” (The enameller found … that the
three goddesses lacked charm and grace. He replaced them with three figures of a much
more elegant style, fed on classicism.) (p. 19).
22 Enamels will be referenced throughout by the letter B and the number given in
Sophie Baratte, “La Série de plaques du maître de l’Enéide.”
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 167
Aeneas, upon arriving in Italy, encounters a kind of mirror reflecting events
from Trojan history (Aeneid 6:20–33). It will be recalled that Aeneas and his
companions, as they contemplate the wall decorations, are interrupted by the
Sibyl who announces that “non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit” (not
sights like these does this hour demand) (Aeneid 6:37), pulling Aeneas away
from meditation on the past towards his future destiny.23 This scene is a rich
site for discussion of the Aeneid in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Before focusing on important changes that occur between the German
woodcut and the French enamel (Figures 4 and 5), it is first productive to
compare both to a much older illustration of this scene (Figure 3), from
the earliest known illustrated manuscript of the Aeneid (c. 400), the Vatican
Virgil (MS Vat. lat. 3225).24
Bringing the Vatican Virgil into dialogue with the later renderings of
the same scene yields a number of observations and confirms the fact that
“[without] a continuous tradition of illustration to draw on, Renaissance artists
had to reinvent appropriate iconographical programs for Virgil’s books.”25
The earlier illustration, executed in a very pagan Rome before the sackings
of the fifth century, shows Aeneas and Achates dressed in tunics and togas
– Virgil had, after all, referred to the Romans as the “gens togata” (Aeneid
1:282).26 The magnificent white temple no doubt echoed for contemporary
viewers the intense architectural projects of the time (e.g. Constantine’s arch
or Diocletian’s baths). Grüninger’s woodcut and the Limoges enamel, on
the other hand, show the Roman heroes wearing turbans – one assumes, to
denote their foreignness. Even more intriguing is the fact that the unadorned
walls of Apollo’s temple in the Vatican Virgil are now decorated with the
scenes described in Virgil’s text. Early sixteenth-century illustrators would
23 The Sibyl’s interruption of Aeneas’ contemplation of the temple (and of the reader’s
experience of ecphrasis) has been productively identified as an allusion to Alexandrian and
Neoteric models (i.e. Catullus 64 and Callimachus) wherein epic narrative is paralysed by
“digression, excursus, and inset ecphrasis” (Alessandro Barchiesi, “Virgilian Narrative:
Ecphrasis,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997], pp. 271–81, p. 274).
24 This date is given by David Herndon Wright, The Vatican Vergil: A Masterpiece
of Late Antique Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 1. For a brief
summary of this manuscript, see The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years,
edd. Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam (New Haven CT: Yale University Press,
2008), pp. 433–4.
25 Michael Liversidge, “Virgil in Art,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed.
Martindale, p. 94.
26 Shelley Stone begins his informative and detailed study of the toga with this quote
from Virgil. See Shelley Stone, “The Toga: From National to Ceremonial Costume,” The
World of Roman Costume, edd. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), pp. 13–45. See also Caroline Vout, “The Myth
of the Toga: Understanding the History of Roman Dress,” Greece & Rome, 43 (1996):
204–20.
168 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
Figure 3: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple
seem more aware of the importance of the text’s ecphrasis, more than even
just a few years earlier: the 1483 prose version, Le livre des Énéydes, makes
no mention (visual or textual) of the temple’s outer decoration.27 Moreover,
whereas the Vatican Virgil has the Sibyl gesturing towards the temple (and
whereas in Virgil she actually interrupts Aeneas’ viewing), the Grüninger and
Limoges images show Aeneas actively observing while the Sibyl talks with
Achates in the bottom right-hand corner, seemingly waiting to interrupt him.
Both woodcut and enamel (Figures 4 and 5) show a series of small scenes
illustrated in neatly framed sections. The doubling of the interpretive act –
a reader seeing Aeneas and companions reading these scenes – stands out
compared with the Vatican Virgil and compared with the 1483 French trans-
lation. Moreover, this emphasis seems even clearer in the French enamel, as
can be seen by comparing up-close the figures of Aeneas and his companions
in Figures 4 and 5. In the woodcut (Figure 4), Aeneas has his back completely
turned to the viewer and his left hand seemingly raised to accompany his
speech without pointing to anything in particular. His two companions both
27 See Virgile, Le livre des Énéydes (Lyon: G. Le Roy, 1483), pp. 116–17. Regarding
the temple, the text states merely this: “Qãt eneas & sa gẽt furẽt arriuez … eneas alla a la
forest a vng riche tẽple que dedal’ auoit fonde. en ce tẽple prit repos eneas deuant ql allast
en celle ville” (When Aeneas and his people had arrived … Aeneas went to the forest
towards a rich temple that Daedalus had founded. In this temple he rested before heading
into town) (p. 116).
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 169
Figure 4: Aeneas at
Apollo’s Temple
look up, not focusing on one scene more than on any other. Aeneas seems to
be presenting the temple’s façade in general, not any one moment of Trojan
history. In the enamel version (Figure 5), however, Aeneas’ head is turned,
his left eye is now visible and he looks in a specific direction. Moreover,
his left hand now reaches just over the border and into the representation of
Icarus. What was once a group of three men somewhat disconnected from the
building before them has been recast as a mise en scène of the act of reading
– perhaps even, of the act of reading a specific scene.
The two panels showing the fate of Icarus offer no particularly eloquent
changes to help us understand the change in Aeneas’ posture. Virgil’s text
says very little about this section: “tu quoque magnam / partem opere in
170 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
Figure 5: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple
tanto, sineret dolor, Icare, haberes. / bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro, /
bis patriae cecidere manus” (You, too, Icarus, would have large share in such
a work, did grief permit: twice had he essayed to fashion your fall in gold;
twice sank the father’s hands) (Aeneid 6:30–3). The sole change between
woodcut and enamel is the emphasis placed on the reading of a particular
scene – i.e. the presence of Aeneas’ left hand. It could be conceivably argued
that the viewer is supposed to underscore the obvious parallel between Icarus’
flight from Crete and Aeneas’ own flight from the same place: Icarus and his
father Daedalus were imprisoned by King Minos on the island of Crete and
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 171
thus famously constructed wax wings in order to escape; Aeneas, too, had
to negotiate the island of Crete – having initially hoped to find there “gentis
cunabula nostrae” (the cradle of our race) (Aeneid 3:105), Aeneas and his
troops instead discovered only “lues et letifer annus” (a plague and a season
of death) (Aeneid 3:139), for Anchises had misinterpreted the oracle, some-
thing Aeneas will realize only later in a dream: “non haec tibi litora suasit /
Delius aut Cretae iussit considere Apollo” (Not these the shores the Delian
Apollo counseled, not in Crete did he bid you settle) (Aeneid 3:161–2). Crete
in the Aeneid is a false cunabulum, a cradle of error, not the birthplace or
home of the Trojans (and Romans). The Icarus story also relates, via echoes
of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, as David Quint has shown, to Avernus and
to the whole episode of Aeneas’ catabasis: just as Icarus fell from the sky,
so too there fly no birds above Avernus.28 It might thus be extrapolated for
these two reasons that the enamel’s emphasis on the Icarus story not only
reinforces an understanding of Aeneas’ mission (to head from Troy, through
various stop-off points, including Crete, to Latium), but also to the centrality
of Book 6 within the epic’s overall structure – to which I shall return.29
The enamel thus forces the reader to focus on the Icarus episode which,
in turn, suggests both a re-mythologizing of Aeneas’ own mission and the
centrality of Book 6. Perhaps more important than the seeming emphasis
on the Icarus episode is the way the enamel foregrounds the problem of
interpretation. As I discuss later, contemporary editions of Virgil frequently
included much commentary and the act of reading the Aeneid was very much
directed by commentators such as Servius or Silvetris, whose texts often took
up more space on the page than the Aeneid itself. It is thus tempting to see
the emphasis on guided interpretation in the French enamel as a reference to
this practice of reading allegorically.
One final point is that Aeneas’ engaged posture and his gesticulation
toward a specific image might also be read as an enameller’s attempt to
suggest how individual images, devoid of the text which surrounds the wood-
cuts in Grüninger’s edition, can indeed suffice to transmit a narrative and a
message. Although the original destination for the series of Limoges enamels
as a whole is unknown (if indeed it was to have originally remained as one
single collection), it is fascinating to consider the possibility that the temple
of Apollo, as depicted with colourful scenes in the enamel, perhaps func-
tioned as a kind of visual preface, given that one possible destination for the
28 David Quint, “Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius in Paradise Lost,”
Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004): 847–81, pp. 848–51.
29 A final (and admittedly rather fanciful) comment is that, retrospectively, through
Francus’ inability to depart from Crete in Ronsard’s Franciade, the emphasis on the Icarus
story highlights the difficulty of France’s recuperation of the model of Aeneas’ mission.
On Francus’ stay in Crete, see Phillip John Usher, “Non haec litora suasit Apollo: la Crète
dans la Franciade de Ronsard,” La Revue des Amis de Ronsard, 22 (2009): 65–89.
172 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
series might have been furniture, more specifically cassoni or coffres (i.e.
chests, specifically marriage chests). Indeed, a number of the enamels were at
one point attached to just such an object.30 The obvious precedent is the series
of Aeneid illustrations executed by Apollonio di Giovanni (1414/17–65) on
panels for a marriage chest,31 based on the illustrations that he also executed
for the Virgil manuscript in Florence’s Biblioteca Riccardiana (codex 492).32
Homer and Virgil had sung of the ruin of Troy but, wrote the Italian humanist
poet Ugolino Verino in the second book of his Flametta, “certe melius nobis
nunc tuscus Apelles / Pergamon incensum pinxit Apollonius” (certainly the
Tuscan Apelles Apollonius now painted burning Troy better for us).33
As well as perhaps echoing contemporary emphasis on Virgilian commen-
tary and allegorical reading, the Limoges enamel of Apollo’s temple, with
Aeneas’ engagement with the Icarus scene, might thus also be read as a
pedagogical model of how to interact with the cassone when the text of
the Grüninger edition is no longer there. From the present remarks, it is
already clear that these enamels relate not to the restored classical text of
the late sixteenth century: despite the classical influence on female figures
which points to the growing influence of Italian art in France at this time, the
‘reading lesson’ at Cumae, as presented here, suggests emphasis on reading
the epic with a guide, just as Aeneas explained moments from Trojan history.
Editions and Allegory
To explore more fully the idea that the enamels relate to a specific way of
reading the Aeneid, let us turn to the way they depict Aeneas’ descent into the
underworld in Book 6. Let us remember first that, although it is established
that the Limoges enamellers relied on the original 1502 edition of Virgil, not
on the Lyons Opera (1517 and 1529) which reproduced Brant’s woodcuts,
30 This item is described in an 1892 auction catalogue as follows: “A large chasse or
coffer, constructed of Limoges enamel plaques in a framework of gilt metal. 26” long,
9¼” wide, 20” high; each plaque 9” x 7¾” (p. 142, item #528). The catalogue author
erroneously identifies the scenes as coming from the Odyssey. Also unfortunate is that
the only edition of this catalogue I have been able to consult includes no illustrations,
although illustrations are promised both by an introductory index page and by references
in the text. (Magniac Hollingworth, Catalogue of the renowned collection of Works of Art
chiefly formed by the late Hollingworth Magniac, Esq. Known as the Colworth Collection
[Christie, Mason and Woods, 1892], consulted at the Frick Reference Library, September
2008.)
31 See Ellen Callman, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp.
40–2 and plates 43–8.
32 Callman, Apollonio di Giovanni, pp. 7–11 and 53–6; and Ernst Hans Gombrich,
“Apollonio di Giovanni: A Florentine Cassone Workshop Seen through the Eyes of a
Humanist Poet,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 18 (1955): 16–34.
33 Quoted Gombrich, “Apollonio di Giovanni,” p. 33 (translation p. 17).
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 173
it is fair to say that these later editions and the enamels themselves enter-
tain a parallel relationship with the Grüninger original. Within a short period
(approximately six years), Grüninger’s Aeneid would spring up in two French
cities: in Limoges in these enamels, and in the 1529 Lyons edition of the
Virgilian text, which also contains a plethora of commentary, as the full title
makes clear: Opera Virgiliana … cvm decem commentis, docte et familiariter
exposita (The Works of Virgil … with ten commentaries, explained expertly
and in familiar terms). The medieval tradition of allegory, after Servius and
Fulgentius, culminates in the twelfth-century commentary of the Platonist
philosopher Bernard Silvestris. His commentary on the Aeneid, eschewing
issues relating to grammar or historical reference, focuses almost entirely
on questions of allegory. Virgil, for Silvestris, must be treated “both as poet
and as philosopher.”34 His Virgil is also Augustan – “he extols the deeds of
Aeneas using poetic fictions so that he might earn the favour of Augustus” (p.
3) – but it is as a philosopher that Silvestris primarily reads Virgil. Nowhere,
says Silvestris, does Virgil declare “philosophic truth more profoundly than
in [the sixth] book” (p. 31). To characterize Aeneas’ descent into the under-
world, Silvestris establishes that there are four kinds of descent and that
while Aeneas’ is literally of the fourth kind known as the descent of artificium
(artifice) – which “takes place when a necromancer, by the necromantic art,
through an execrable sacrifice seeks conversation with demons and consults
them about his future life”35 – on an allegorical level, Aeneas’ descent is
rather of the second kind, i.e. the descent of virtus (virtue) which can be
viewed through the device of integumentum.36 In other words, Aeneas’ cata-
basis, in medieval allegory, stood for the contemplation of virtues and vices
necessary to obtain knowledge (scientia), echoing Servius’ earlier note on
Book 6.37 Two questions seem appropriate. What traces are there (if any)
of this moralizing reading of Book 6 in the woodcuts and enamels? And if
34 Bernard Silvestris, Commentary on the first six books of Virgil’s Aeneid, edd. and
trans. Earl G. Schreiber and Thomas E. Maresca (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1979), p. 3.
35 Julian W. Jones, Jr. “The Allegorical Traditions of the Aeneid,” Vergil at 2000:
Commemorative Essays on the Poet and his Influence, ed. John D. Bernard (New York:
AMS Press, 1986), p. 121.
36 For a discussion of the meaning of integumentum, see Brian Stock, Myth and
Science in the Twelfth Century; A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972), pp. 49–58. See also Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry
in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1972).
37 “Nam singulis [libris] res singulas dedit, ut primo omina, secundo pathos, tertio
errores, quarto ethos, quinto festivitatem, sexto scientiam” (For in individual [books] he
dealt with individual matters, as in the first, omens; in the second, suffering; in the third,
wanderings; in the fourth, character; in the fifth, celebration; in the sixth, knowledge) (The
Virgilian Tradition, edd. Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 817).
174 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
such traces exist, how do they relate to early sixteenth-century readings of
the Aeneid?
Aeneas enters into the underworld in the presence of the Sibyl. She tells
him of the difficulty of twice crossing the Stygios lacus (Stygian lake) and
of the need to seek an aureus ramus (golden bough). After Aeneas picks the
appropriate bough, he offers funeral rites to Misenus and heads to Avernus;
the Sibyl conducts the proper ceremonies by killing four dark-backed heifers
and pouring water on their brows. Aeneas himself slays a lamb and a heifer
and sets up a flaming altar. The Sibyl finally announces that the descent into
the underworld can begin: “nunc animis opus, Aenea, nunc pectore firmo”
(Now, Aeneas, is the hour for courage, now for a dauntless heart) (Aeneid
6:261). Although, from this point on, we occasionally read indications of
spatial progress expressed in the plural – e.g. Ibant (They went) (Aeneid
6:268), Ergo iter peragunt (So they continue the journey) (Aeneid 6:384) –
the reader can be forgiven for occasionally overlooking the continued pres-
ence of the Sibyl. Although assumedly at Aeneas’ side throughout, Virgil
does not constantly remind us of that fact. When Aeneas asks her a question
about the spirits on the banks of the Styx, she is said moreover to reply
breviter (briefly) (Aeneid 6:321), as if to minimize her role. She does, for
sure, play a pedagogical role: she explains who the unburied souls are, she
will defend Aeneas against Charon’s abrupt rebuke, etc., but her presence
is still only mentioned somewhat intermittently. It is thus a point of some
importance that the illustrations under discussion here render visually the
Sibyl’s presence in each of the scenes relating to the catabasis and that,
thus depicted, the Sibyl’s presence can never be overlooked. Her role as
interpreter and guide of the underworld is highlighted, inscribing the whole
catabasis episode, in the tradition of Silvestris, under the rubric of a learning
experience wherein contemplation of virtus and vitium can lead to scientia.
The viewer is forced to remember just how close the Sibyl remains to Aeneas
throughout his journey in the underworld, how she supposedly mediates (like
Silvestris’ own commentary) what Aeneas sees. If the journey is indeed to
be viewed through an allegorical and moralizing integumentum (Silvestris’
fourth type of descent), then it is the Sibyl’s necromancy (the artificial type
of descent) that presides over the journey and directs the reader’s attention,
even more strongly in the images than in Virgil’s text. Apart from a slightly
Italianate (as opposed to Gothic) appearance, the Sibyl of the enamels does
not differ significantly from that of the woodcuts.
Throughout the series of enamels related to the underworld, the illustra-
tions appear to deemphasize the narrative in order to foreground a moral view
of the virtues and vices to be found there. The illustrations of the Palinurus
episode are a case in point. Given the importance of the underworld meeting
with Aeneas’ dead helmsman (Aeneid 6:337–83) – which rewrites in the first
person a scene previously expressed in the third person (Aeneid 5:779–871)
– one might expect Palinurus to occupy a central position in the illustration.
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 175
As is obvious from Figures 6 and 7, Palinurus’ importance is seemingly mini-
mized compared to the monstrous and medieval mouth of hell.
The greater part of Figures 6 and 7 focuses not on the substantial exchange
between Aeneas, Palinurus and the Sibyl (Aeneid 6:337–83), but on the
description of Charon’s boat and the crowds wishing to be ferried by him
(Aeneid 6:298–316), as well as on the Sibyl’s preceding description of the
fate of the unburied (which is also, of course, Palinurus’ fate): “haec omnis,
quam cernis, inops inhumataque turba est; / portitor ille Charon; hi, quos
uehit unda, sepulti. / nec ripas datur horrendas et rauca fluenta / transpor-
tare prius quam sedibus ossa quierunt. / centum errant annos uolitantque
haec litora circum; / tum demum admissi stagna exoptata reuisunt” (All this
crowd that you see is helpless and graveless; yonder ferryman is Charon;
those whom the flood carries are the buried. He may not carry them over
the dreadful banks and hoarse-voiced waters until their bones have found
a resting place. A hundred years they roam and flit about these shores; then
only are they admitted and revisit the longed-for pools) (Aeneid 6:325–30).
Rather than on the specificity of Palinurus’ lot, the illustrations emphasize
the general fate of the insepulti. Whereas, in Virgil’s text, “the pathos of the
insepulti as a whole is reinforced by the instance of Palinurus” and whereas
Virgil is seemingly “not primarily concerned with the insepulti but with
Palinurus himself – that is, with Aeneas’ own past,” it would seem that Brant
and subsequently the Limoges enamellers offer a reversal of such a pattern,
suggesting that the general allegorical scheme – the underworld as a place for
contemplating vice, virtue and one’s future actions – takes precedence over
individual elements of the narrative proper.38
To confirm this emphasis on the allegorical structure as opposed to the
narrative particularities, it is a useful exercise to attempt reading the images
(Figures 6 and 7) alongside Silvestris’ commentary. We thus notice that
Charon’s prominent contus (long pole) used to push the boat along (Aeneid
6:302) is imbued by Silvestris with allegorical meaning: “properly the pole,
namely the sustainer of the boat, signifies the nourishment of the body – its
sustenance” (p. 75). The sails in the images are two in number, inflated by
the wind, and somewhat round, corresponding to Silvestris’ insistence that
they are “the two eyes which draw the body to different ends through delight
of pleasures and the lechery of revellers,” turning the ferryman’s boat into a
veritable roving-eye perspective on vice in the underworld, simultaneously a
will to move from vice to virtue (p. 75). The rushing by of the turba (crowd)
of unburied souls up to the shoreline (ad ripas), visible in the images where
bodies gather along the edges, is explained by Silvestris as signifying that
these are souls rushing “to the end of vice and the beginning of mourning,
38 Brooks Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1995), p. 292.
176 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
Figure 6: The Mouth of Hell
sadness and the other emotions” (p. 75). The liminality of the riverbank’s
edge is confirmed in the already quoted verses spoken by the Sibyl, where
she states that the inhumata “volitant … haec litora circum” (roam and flit
about these shores) (Aeneid 6:329); about the word litora (shores), Silvestris
glosses simply “the quitting of the life of pleasure and the beginning of the
life of labor” (p. 77).
Such presentation of the Palinurus episode is echoed directly in the 1529
Lyon edition of the Opera. Visually speaking, Palinurus is dwarfed by the
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 177
Figure 7: The Mouth of Hell
competing commentaries of Servius and Pierius Valerianus, as the text is
surrounded by their commentary and itself occupies less than half the space
of the page. As noted, Servius placed central importance on the sixth book –
“Totus Vergilius plenus est scientia, in qua hic liber tenet principatum” (All
of Virgil is full of knowledge, and above all in this [sixth] book).39 The 1529
Servius commentary beginning with Virgil’s line “multa maestum cognovit in
umbra” (among the deep gloom he knew the sorrowful form) (Aeneid 6:340),
reads as follows:
39 Virgil, Opera (Lyon: Jean Crespin, 1529), Book 6, p. CCLXXIX.
178 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
prudentiores dicunt animas recentes a corporibus sordidiores esse donec
purgentur: quae purgatae incipiunt esse clariores. Unde ait paulo post
donec longa dies perfecto temporis orbe concretam exemit labem puru-
mque reliquit aetherium sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem, id est non
urentis, ut est solis. Inde est quod aliae animae lunarem circulum, aliae
solstitialem retinere dicuntur pro modo purgantionis. bene ergo Palinurum
obscura umbra circumdatum dicit et vix agnitum, qui ne ad loca quidem
pervenerat purgationis: sic etiam de Didone dicturus est agnovitque per
umbram obscuram.40
Those who are rather more versed [in such matters] say that souls fresh
from their bodies are relatively polluted until they are purified: once puri-
fied, they begin to be clearer. Which is why he says a little afterwards,
“until the long day, its circuit of time complete, took away the clotted stain
and left behind the pure ethereal sense and the fire of the un-compounded
air” [6:745–7], that is, not of a burning wind, as is characteristic of the
sun. This is the reason some souls are said to retain a lunar circle, others
a solar circle, according to the measure of purification. Therefore he well
says that Palinurus is surrounded by a dark shadow, and is hardly recog-
nizable, – he who had not arrived even at the place of purification. In this
way, too, is he about to speak concerning Dido, “and he recognized her by
her dark shadow.”
For Servius, the underworld through which Aeneas must pass is a fiction
meant to represent earthly vices (human savagery and lust).41 This is exactly
the underworld illustrated by Brant and the Limoges enamels. The central
place given to the jaws of hell (rather than to the encounter with Palinurus)
draws moreover on two interconnected traditions: that of the iconography of
the Mouth of Hell and that of the Harrowing of Hell. A post-classical Chris-
tian phenomenon popular with both lay and clerical audiences in the Middle
Ages, the Mouth of Hell emerged in Britain in the context of the tenth-
century monastic reform, but quickly spread throughout western Europe
where it moved increasingly from the domain of private devotion to the
public sphere.42 The Grüninger and Limoges bear a striking structural resem-
blance to images showing the Christian Mouth of Hell: souls are captured in
the diabolic jaws while, nearby, a saviour figure and a boat stand for the hope
of salvation. The Virgilian illustrations owe more to such a tradition than to
the text itself: for sure, the initial description of Avernus includes a reference
to the vapour that rises atris faucibus (from black jaws) (Aeneid 6:240–1),
40 Virgil, Opera (1529), p. CCCIIII.
41 On Servius’ allegorizing of Book 6, see Jones, “The Allegorical Traditions of the
Aeneid,” Vergil at 2000, ed. Bernard, pp. 220–1.
42 Gary D. Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to
the Fifteenth Century (Selinsgrove PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1995), pp. 13–14
and 84.
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 179
but this is Avernus as the entrance to Hell, not as an element of the under-
world’s landscape – something that belongs to the later Mouth of Hell tradi-
tion.43 Further on, Virgil mentions the fauces Orci (jaws of Orcus) (Aeneid
6:273), Orcus being of course a Roman god of the underworld who meto-
nymically stands for all of Hades. The centrality of the Mouth of Hell in the
images seems not to depend on Virgil, nor even on Silvestris who offers no
comment about the initial “black jaws” and who glosses the expression “jaws
of Orcus” with one simple word: “birth” (p. 67). This one word, while it does
not explain the image per se, confirms the allegorical scheme explored so far
(hell as rebirth). According to medieval allegory, Aeneas descends into the
underworld to consult his father on the future of Rome (adapting Odysseus’
consultation of Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes), to break with Troy and
be reborn in Latium, to learn from the vices and virtues of the dead and gain
an opportunity for the spirit to transcend the body. The enamels, then, seem to
belong to a tradition of reading the Aeneid also deployed in sixteenth-century
France by contemporary commentary-heavy editions. Whereas writers like
Du Bellay and Ronsard, as the chapters in this volume show, will appropriate
the Aeneid in ways that both remove medieval allegory and associate the
epic with the specifically French context, in the 1530s both editions and this
iconographic sequence suggest nostalgia for an earlier Aeneid, an allegory
for the good Christian life.
The History of Rome
Before concluding, I should like to explore one final question. For obvious
reasons, attention to Roman history in the Aeneid might be seen as prob-
lematic in early sixteenth-century France: the Italian wars (1494–1559), the
increasing pre-eminence of Italian letters and the power of the papacy are all
good reasons why extolling the history of Rome would be logically avoided.
To explore this situation, let us turn to enamel B61 which depicts part of the
episode (Aeneid 6:788–940) during which Anchises reveals to Aeneas the
future history of Rome (Figures 8 and 9). Anchises begins with an impera-
tive “huc geminas nunc flecte acies, hanc aspice gentem / Romanosque tuos”
(Turn hither now your two-eyed gaze, and behold this nation, the Romans
that are yours) (6:788–9). He then proceeds to evoke various future figures
of Roman history, “symbols of the glories and struggles of the Republic.”44
In the Grüninger edition, there are two woodcuts given to the episode: the
first includes a whole cast of characters, beginning with Procas (“Troianae
gloria gentis” [pride of the Trojan nation] [Aeneid 6:767]), the second dealing
43 Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell, p. 87.
44 Frederick E. Brenk, “Auorum Spes Et Purpurei Flores: The Eulogy for Marcellus
in Aeneid 6,” The American Journal of Philology, 107 (1986): 218–28, p. 218.
180 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
Figure 8: Anchises Reveals the Future History of Rome
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 181
Figure 9: Anchises
Reveals the Future
History of Rome
with the exemplum of Marcellus. An enamel is only known for the second
of these.
Before going any further, we must first revisit Virgil’s text:
aspice, ut insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis
ingreditur uictorque uiros supereminet omnis. (6:855–7)
(Behold how Marcellus advances, graced with the spoils of the
chief he slew, and towers triumphant over all!)
Marcus Claudius Marcellus (268–208 BCE) won the spolia opima (rich
spoils), the most prestigious of Roman trophies of victory, at the Battle of
Clastidium in 222 BCE, defeating the Insubrians, a Gallic population settled
in Insubria (modern-day Lombardy). However, the military glory of the
Roman general is quickly overshadowed by the fact that, by his side, is an
“egregium forma iuvenem et fulgentibus armis” (a youth of extraordinary
beauty in resplendent arms), a youthful double of great Marcellus, “sed frons
laeta parum et deiecto lumina vultu” (but with joyless mien and eyes down-
cast) (Aeneid 6:861–2). Aeneas looks on, observing how “nox atra caput tristi
circumvolat umbra” (death’s dark shadow flickers mournfully on his head)
182 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
(Aeneid 6:866). Before Anchises can offer any explanation, Aeneas starts
to cry. In a lament that resembles a “sepulchral epigram,” Anchises then
speaks of how Roman power implies necessary sacrifice, alluding in passing
to the Mausoleum of Augustus, built in 27 BCE: “vel quae, Tiberine, videbis
/ funera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem!” (What a cortege will you
behold, Father Tiber, as you glide past the newly built tomb!) (Aeneid 6:873–
4).45 Finally, Anchises names the “miserande puer” (pitiable youth) in an
ambiguous fashion that has kept scholars busy: “tu Marcellus eris” (You are
to be Marcellus) (Aeneid 6:883–4). Anchises thus identifies the youth as the
younger Marcus Claudius Marcellus (42–23 BCE), a descendant of the older
Marcellus and the son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Octavia, Augustus’
sister. He would marry (in 25 BCE) Augustus’ only daughter, Julia the Elder46
and was generally considered a possible successor for Augustus.47 However,
he died at the age of 19 and was given a public burial by the emperor, being
placed in the new Mausoleum. According to Aelius Donatus, when Virgil
recited the passage for Augustus at a reading at which Octavia was also in
attendance, Octavia fainted as Virgil pronounced “tu Marcellus eris.”48
For Brooks Otis, this passage is an exemplum showing that the “ordeal of
empire is based on sacrifice, especially sacrifice of the young,” which would
serve to prepare Aeneas “to face and accept the tragedy of his mission.”49
The passage is thus “so much more than a piece of Roman propaganda, [for
there is also] mitigation of success by accepted tragedy.”50 To be sure, the
episode is part of an iterative chain, for Marcellus’ death will be echoed in
the deaths of Nisus and Euryalus, Pallas and Lausus, Camillla and Turnus.51
Yet, the exemplum, situated at the end of Book 6 and thus at the centre point
of the entire epic, is rich and ambiguous. It has been suggested that the death
of Marcellus might be read as “symboliz[ing] the death of the future” and that
it might serve as “a strong note of reservation on the vision of Rome’s future
greatness.”52 Marcellus is also, necessarily, “the future hope of [Aeneas’]
race.”53
45 Brenk, “Auorum Spes Et Purpurei Flores,” p. 218.
46 Cassius Dio, Roman History. Books 50–56, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (New York:
Penguin, 1987), 53:27.5.
47 Dio, Roman History, trans. Scott-Kilvert, 53:30.1–2.
48 Aelius Donatus, Life of Virgil, 32. (The standard Latin text is made available by
Vitae vergilianae antiquae. Scriptores graeci et latini, edd. Giorgio Brugnoli and Fabio
Stok [Rome: Istituto Polygraphico, 1997].)
49 Otis, Virgil: A study in Civilized Poetry, p. 303.
50 Otis, Virgil: A study in Civilized Poetry, p. 304.
51 Stephen V. Tracy, “The Marcellus Passage (Aeneid 6:860–886) and Aeneid 9–12,”
The Classical Journal, 70 (1975): 37–42, p. 38.
52 Tracy, “The Marcellus Passage,” p. 38.
53 Edgar Nicholas Genovese, “Deaths in the Aeneid,” Pacific Coast Philology, 10
(1975): 22–8, p. 22.
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 183
Grüninger’s woodcut (Figure 8) depicts the elder and the younger
Marcellus. Toward the bottom of the image, separated from the observing
Aeneas by a curious fence, the elder Marcellus rides his horse and swings his
sword as he chases after three lowly and scared individuals. The images take
up Virgil’s text directly: “hic rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu / sistet
eques, sternet Poenos Gallumque rebellem, / tertiaque arma patri suspendet
capta Quirino” (When the Roman state is reeling under a brutal shock, he will
steady it, will ride down Carthaginians and the insurgent Gaul and offer up
to Father Quirnius a third set of spoils) (Aeneid 6:855–9). As Vasselot noted
many years ago, the enamel (Figure 9) is one of those in the whole series
that least resembles the corresponding Grüninger woodcuts.54 No further
comment has been offered on the issue, however. Of the numerous differ-
ences, the most striking is surely the fact that the enamel clearly draws the
viewer’s attention to the elder Marcellus, whose white horse clearly stands
out from the rest of the scene, both because of the contrast in colours and
because of the horse’s size, seemingly marginalizing the notion of the sacri-
fice that comes with victory. Although the enamel still has multiple focal
points – in addition to the horse rider, the group of mourners around the
young Marcellus, the group constituted of Aeneas and the Sibyll and finally
Virgil himself – the main theme is now clearly the elder Marcellus. In the
production context of Brant’s woodcut – the artist functioning as “priest-poet
of the German nation” – it is likely that we can read the whole scene through
the topos of translatio imperii, with Rome’s glory – embodied by Augustus
and (here) the elder Marcellus – being passed to Germany.55 However, in the
context of the French enamels, such a topos is potentially problematic, for the
elder Marcellus is pursuing “Gallum rebellem” (rebel Gaul). It is tempting
indeed to look for confirmation that the Limoges artists (or their learned
project director) understood the implications. Such confirmation might be
located in the change in attitude of the figures being chased in the bottom
right-hand corner, the “Poenos Gallumque rebellem.” In the woodcut (Figure
8), the fleeing figures turn to look at Marcellus; in the enamel (Figure 9),
it appears rather that the figures have stopped running and have turned to
face Marcellus, perhaps to suggest that Gaul will fight. On the one hand,
the French enamel thus emphasizes the elder Marcellus who won victory
over the Gallic Insubrians rather than the death of younger Marcellus, neces-
sary for a Roman future; on the other hand, it seemingly foregrounds French
resistance to Roman invasion.
54 Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 45: “cette plaque est l’une de celles où l’émailleur
a suivi le moins fidèlement son modèle” (this enamel is one of those where the enameller
most faithfully followed his model).
55 E.L. Harrison, “Virgil, Sebastian Brant, and Maximilian I,” The Modern Language
Review, 76 (1981): 99–115, p. 115.
184 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
To explore further the enamels’ depiction of Franco-Italian relations, we
can also turn to enamel B76 wherein are depicted various subjects drawn
from the shield of Aeneas (Aeneid 8:626–731). Just as future Roman history
had been vocalized by Anchises in Book 6, so were future Roman triumphs
represented on Aeneas’ shield by Vulcan. As is often noted, while Aeneas’
shield has a precedent in that of Achilles (Iliad 18), the latter’s need for a
new shield was fully justified within the narrative (he had lent his armour to
Patroclus who lost it to Hector), thus making it more “directly relevant to the
political purpose of the poem” compared with Aeneas’ shield.56 On another
level, however, Aeneas’ shield, although presented by Venus to Aeneas at
the Trojan camp in a somewhat less directly motivated manner, is surely
just as central to the poem’s politics (he will use the armour against Turnus)
and its status as ecphrastic commentary (on Roman history) is heightened.
Otis summarizes the shield’s message as follows: “Everywhere violence is
defeated, evil is punished, religio observed. All this is but the setting of the
greatest of struggles between Roman pietas and barbaric violentia.”57 Another
commentator underlines that “[Aeneas’] shield itself represents [the] last true
passage of national pride in the poem.”58 For the woodcut, Brant selected
several events in particular: Catiline quite literally “minaci / pendentem
scopulo” (hanging on a frowning cliff) (Aeneid 8:668–9), Tarquin, Cloelia
crossing the Tiber on horseback to escape the Etruscan King Porsenna, Hora-
tius Cocles defending and destroying the Pons Sublicius, Manlius defending
Rome against invading Gauls, etc. Neither woodcut nor enamel attempts to
literally reproduce Virgil’s description of the shield, which features seven
tableaux organized around a central section showing Augustus’ victory over
Anthony at the Battle of Actium.59 The modern viewer of Brant’s woodcut
is probably first struck by the absence of Actium. Vasselot noted that the
battle of Actium was depicted in the upper right-hand corner, but (unless the
present author is missing something) this is not the case.60 From both the
woodcut and the enamel, then, the politically central event situated at the
centre of the shield’s surface disappears, no doubt because of Actium’s polit-
ical importance – after this victory, Octavian became Augustus and adopted
56 William Francis Jackson Knight, Cumaean Gates: A Reference of the Sixth Aeneid
to the Initiation Pattern (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1936), p. 295. A discussion of Achilles’
shield is provided by Stephen Scully, “Reading the Shield of Achilles: Terror, Anger,
Delight,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 101 (2003): 29–47.
57 Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry, p. 342.
58 Tracy, “The Marcellus Passage,” p. 40.
59 On the possible reasons for Virgil’s choice of these scenes, see Knight, Cumaean
Gates, pp. 296–7.
60 Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 48: “dans l’angle supérieur droit [on voit] la
bataille d’Actium” (in the upper right-hand corner, one can see the Battle of Actium).
Baratte summarizes the subjects depicted as “Catilina, Tarquin, Clélie, Horatius Coclès”
(Baratte, “La Série de plaques,” p. 147).
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 185
the title of princeps, a moment synonymous with the passage from republic
to empire.61 Now, if the enamellers did indeed alter the figures pursued by the
elder Marcellus because they were Gauls, as suggested above, then we might
expect them also to alter the figures beaten back by Manlius at the Capitol in
the top right-hand portion of their version of events from Aeneas’ shield – but
this is not the case. Here, Gauls from Brennus (modern-day Seine-et-Marne)
are beaten back with as much energy as in the original woodcut. While Brant
may well have made a specific decision to suppress Actium, it would seem
that the Limoges enamellers were not troubled by the beating back of the
Gauls in this scene, suggesting that interpreting the emphasis on Marcellus
and the fleeing Gauls in Figure 9 as a depiction of Franco-Italian relations
should be considered hypothesis rather than fact, although a hypothesis that
makes would seem justified given the contemporary political situation.
Conclusions
It is tempting, when trying to read the Limoges enamels, to find meaning in
every detail. It must, however, be accepted that any interpretation of them is
partly based on informed guesses. More specifically, it must be kept in mind
that the enamels, whoever their original sponsor and whatever their final
destination, were a commodity. The commodification of the Aeneid and the
need to ensure that illustrations reflected evolutions in aesthetics would seem
aided by practical questions of available materials. It was once suggested
that the illustrations in the 1502 Strasbourg edition, in the way they relate
Aeneas’ sea voyage, echo the recent discovery of the New World. The claim
is notably supported by the type of vessel in which we see Aeneas travel
which (rather than a Trojan frigate or a Roman trireme) is a Spanish caravel,
as depicted in the illustrated accounts of Columbus’ voyage.62 More recently
however, David Scott Wilson-Okamura has provided the sobering reminder
that while “someone in Brant’s workshop [may have wanted] to appropriate
some of that Roman glamour for the modern explorer,” it is equally possible
that “the designer just needed to draw some ships that day, and happened to
find a model for them in a dog-eared copy of the Basel Columbus that was
61 As C.J. Putnam underlines, “the crucial scene is … in medio, at the center, with
the rest of Roman history, of which the ekphrasis gives us a selection, distributed around
it. … Aeneas’ shield is a visible icon of circularity” (Michael C.J. Putnam, Virgil’s Epic
Designs [New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1998], p. 154).
62 The claim was first made in Anna Cox Brinton “The Ships of Columbus in Brant’s
Virgil,” Art and Archaeology, 26 (1928), p. 94, and was re-asserted more recently by
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, Jonson, Shakespeare, and Early Modern Virgil (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 22–5.
186 PHILLIP JOHN USHER
kicking around the workshop” – a lesson also valid for the enamels.63 Certain
differences between the woodcuts and the enamels are almost surely due
to an artisan’s unintentional error. Thus, we note that in the enamel version
of Brant’s image on fol. 176, Neptune’s trident (strangely) becomes a torch
– most likely by visual contaminatio from the flames which, in the back-
ground, consume Troy.64 These cautionary tales related to the very practical
conditions of enamel production should serve as a reminder of the slippery
interpretive ground any viewer of the Limoges enamels is on.
It can be stated with relative certainty, however, that the Limoges enamels
would have looked somewhat dated to a late sixteenth-century public. Their
original production coincides chronologically with editions of Virgil that
emphasized medieval allegorical commentary. Robert Estienne’s pride in
having “remis en leur entier” (fully restored) the commentaries of Servius
for his 1532 edition of the Opera surely stands as one turning point in how
the Aeneid was appropriated in France. Servius was still popular, implying a
certain moralized reading of the text as discussed above. On the other hand,
Estienne’s would be the last great folio production of Virgil complete with
commentary swarming around the text. The newer, smaller format editions
would generally continue to include Donatus’ Vita, but not huge amounts of
allegorical commentary. By the 1550s, France would be reading a different
Aeneid – indeed a different Virgil. In the Praelectiones that accompany
Ramus’ Bucolics (1555), the latter criticizes the commentators who look
everywhere for allegory, as had already Richard Gorée in his notes to the
Bucoliques (1552).65 For the Aeneid, we might turn towards the publication
of Louys des Masure’s translation of Les quatre premiers liures de l’Eneide
(1552) by Lyonnais printer Jean de Tournes. The opening letter, dedicating
the work to the “TRESHAULT, TRESILLUSTRE, & TRES-excellent Prince,
Monseigneur Charles, Duc de Calabre, de Lorraine, de Bar, & de Gueldres,
Marchis, Mergus du Pont, Conte de Prouence, de Voudemont, de Zutpher,
&.c,” situates the work’s dedicatee as a descendant of Aeneas and, in view
of this, the translator begs his prince’s patronage for completion of the work,
echoing Ronsard’s own overtures, regarding his Franciade, to Henri II
(beginning in 1549) and later Charles IX. Yet, while Des Masures’s transla-
tion appropriates the Aeneid into the French language in order to provide his
63 David Scott Wilson-Okamura, “Virgilian Models of Colonization in Shakespeare’s
Tempest,” English Literary History, 70 (2003): 709–37, p. 711.
64 This difference is noted by Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition
of Vergil,” p. 196.
65 On Ramus and the Bucolics, see Anthony James Boyle, “Meaning of the Eclogues,”
Ancient Pastoral: Ramus Essays on Greek and Roman Pastoral Poetry, ed. Anthony
James Boyle (Berwick, Victoria: Aureal Publications, 1975). A later re-edition of Ramus’
work is available at Columbia’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library: P. Virgilii Maronis
Bucolica, P. Rami, professoris regii praelectionibus exposita: quibus poëtae vita praeposita
est ([Paris]: Apud Andream Wechelum, 1572).
THE AENEID IN THE 1530s: READING WITH THE LIMOGES ENAMELS 187
sponsor with access to the story of one of his supposed ancestors, the same
edition restores the Aeneid to its Roman context. An image from the begin-
ning of Book 4 depicts a Roman Aeneas, dressed neither as a German, nor
with Italianate ornament, but with a semblance of historical awareness for
costume.
The Limoges enamels belong to an earlier Aeneid. Their reproduction of
Grüninger’s medievalizing woodcuts cannot be simplistically ascribed to a
“lack of inventiveness.”66 Rather, it demonstrates the commodification and
continued pertinence of the same Virgil equally promoted by contemporary
editions, a Virgil heavily cloaked in medieval allegory. The enamels portraying
the episodes of Book 6 lean on the pedagogical and allegorical function of
the episodes within the epic, presenting a reading centred around virtue and
vice. This allegorical emphasis is reflected in the enamels discussed earlier in
the present chapter as well; Aeneas’ role as hermeneutic guide at the temple
of Apollo echoes the hermeneutic gesture of the enamels themselves, and
the de-emphasizing of historicity and denial of Roman glory in the enamels
portraying the episode of revelation of Roman history, too, reinforce an alle-
gorical posture. Over the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, editions of
Virgil edited by Josse Bade grew to include not five, but ten commentaries,
as well as the continuation of the Aeneid by Maffeo Vegio.67 Ramus, Etienne,
Des Masures and others would change this. It has been stated that, with the
1552 translation, illustrations “become almost exclusively decorative.”68 The
preceding pages would seem to argue rather that both the Limoges enamels
and the 1552 illustrations in the Jean de Tournes edition relate to a specific set
of trends in how the Virgilian text was appropriated within France and that the
1552 woodcuts, if anything, relate rather to a growing visual appreciation for
Virgil’s Roman-ness that corresponds to a growing trend of scientific editing
of Virgil. But before those illustrations, before a true Renaissance Virgil
appeared, the viewers of these enamels in early sixteenth-century France,
while offered female forms reminiscent of Botticelli, were still encouraged
to look towards a medieval Virgil, even if certain details suggested an aware-
ness for the contemporary political situation vis-à-vis France and Italy.
66 Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 196.
67 A study of editions of Virgil in Renaissance Italy and France is provided in the
introduction, Eugène Benoist, Œuvres de Virgile (Paris: Hachette, 1884). On Ascensius,
see Philippe Renouard, Bibliographie des impressions et des œuvres de Josse Badius
Ascensius, imprimeur et humaniste (New York: Burt Franklin, 1964). See also Maurice
Lebel, Préfaces de Josse Bade, 1462–1535: humaniste, éditeur-imprimeur et préfacier
(Louvain: Peeters, 1988).
68 See Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 198.
