Jerome V. Jacalone

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli was born in Viterbo between1610-12 and was a pupil of Domenichino and Pietro da Cortona in Rome. A protégé of the Barberini family, he painted frescoes in the Vatican for Pope Urban VIII, of that family.

Cardinal Francesco Barberini, Papal legate to the court of France in 1625, was so deeply impressed by the decorative value of the French tapestries that in 1630 he founded an atelier for the production of these works of art in the Barberini palace in his native Rome. Romanelli was appointed designer of the cartoons for the tapestries and created many drawings and gouaches for the works. One set of tapestries produced were based on the Greek mythological story of Dido and Aeneas of which eight were created.

The story of Dido and Aeneas can be found in the Aenid of Virgil and tells of Aeneas, who was said to be the son of Venus by the Trojan Anchises. When he set sail for Italy with a large fleet of ships they were to encounter a great storm which scattered many of the vessels with several being wrecked on the coast of Africa near Carthage, the city founded by Dido, a daughter of Agenor, King of Tyre. Dido was warned in a dream that her brother intended to kill her in order to obtain her treasures and fled from Tyre to Africa. There she purchased land from the King of Lybia on which she found the city of Carthage.

This very complete drawing shows Aeneas coming ashore with a group of soldiers disembarking a caravel, a very fast ship originating from Portugal. In the background two other vessels are visible while in the foreground shipmates struggle to bring lifeboats, full of survivors from the sunken companion boats, ashore to safety. Overhead is a vision of what could be his mother Venus in disguise to assist him during his perilous journey.