Dido of Carthage Through the Eyes of Some Western Classical Artists

The History of Carthage has fired the imaginations of writers and artists since the Renaissance, because of the city’s heroic resistance to the Romans. Many tried to depict or describe episodes from Carthage’s past without any knowledge of North African’s History. The sources they consulted were firt and foremost roman texts such as Virgil’s Aeneid and Livy’s History of Rome. They also drew on biographies of the protagonists by the Greek writer Plutarch, which were widely disseminated throughout Western Europe. For many centuries, sources illuminating the Punic side of events were entirely absent.

Part of the appeal of Dido, Hannibal Barcca, Sophoniba and others who were involved in the wars between Rome and Carthage was the exoticism of these women and men, who were sometimes portrayed as dark-skinned North Africans and who were nonetheless capable of wreaking havoc among the forces of the noble Romans. Among the Carthaginian heroes, Dido occupies an important place in the Western artistic imagination. She was the mysterious queen who succeeded in detaining Aeneas at her court until the gods sent their messenger, Mercury, ordering him to return to Italy. She was clever, beautiful and alluring, as courageous as man, and she consequently possessed almost superhuman gifts. She could serve as an example to kings and queens alike, but she was also described in the sources as an immoral and perverse temptress and a suicide. Dido’s Carthage would later become the powerful opponent of Arenea’s descendants. The Queen cursed the future Rome as she burned at the stake.

Dido was seen as equal of rulers and soldiers of military fame. She built a city, fought against the surrounding tribes, and went hunting, all supposedly male activities. Aeneas broke into this happy pioneering world, and his passion seems initially to have enriched it. One of the high points in their stormy relationship which a torrential downpour and thunderstorm force them to take shelter in a cave. The two are in every respect a match of other, and in the sketch produced by many Western’s artists, like Romeyn de Hooghe (1645 – 1708), Dido wears a suit of armour over her royal robe. This is a highly atmospheric sketch, with its sarcophagi bearing imaginary inscriptions in Greek. Dido’s assistant Anna withdraws discreetly, and the heroes have laid their weapons aside.

Her counterpart, Aeneas, was generally described in glowing terms, despite his weakness in succumbing to Dido’s charms. His first meeting with Dido was sometimes depicted in cycles of painting or tapestries, such as the series made for the negotiations of the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678. The pictures were reproduced in cheap copies. Crispijn van de Passe’s series consisted of at least thirteen prints. It is clear from the caption to the anonymous classicist print dating from around 1700 that Aeneas is also depicted here as devious. He plays the gallant when the queen meets him in the harbor or in her throne room, but meanwhile he pursues his own goals. For Dido, the future has only death in store.

Aeneas’s entrance into Carthage is in itself a miraculous event. Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) depicts Venus showing Aeneas and Achates the way of the city, in his sketch for a ceiling painting. She is sitting on a cloud that obscures Aeneas’s fleet. In the print by Simon Thomassin (1655-1733), two lines from Aeneid clarify the castaways, and after he has spoken, Aeneas appears to descend from the cloud. Dido’s throne is in front of some building that are under construction; on the left, a labourer is busying himself with a marble column. The 18^th century fan depicts the same scene; for its erudite owner, the allusion to the storm in which Aeneas appears may have been a delightful association with the fan that cooled her brow, and that was furthermore an important instrument in lovemaking. All these scenes emphasize the contrast between Aeneas’s fiery temperament and Dido’s restraint.   

The Dutch tragedy of « Didoos doot », written in 1668 by Andries Pels (1655-1731), served in turn as a source of inspiration well into the 18^th century, when the play was still being performed. In a print by Simon Fokke (1690-1775), dating from 1758, Dido in burning at the stake in front of canal house, while Aeneas is depicted as a modern burgher, complete with the long wig that was fashionable at the time. The aim was probably to ridicule Pels’s play, which was regarded as pompous. The scene included several mirror characters: a urinating figure of Amor, Dido’s wet nurse Anna in the doorway. None of the artists who produced any of these painting or prints made the slightest effort to portray Carthage or Dido as foreign. The architecture is classicist, and the characters’ dress is quasi-Roman, probably based on stage costumes.

When we look at the image of Dido through Classical Art, it is striking that she always served as example of beauty, virtue, bravery and courage.