“Dido Building Carthage” by J. M. W. Turner

“Dido Building Carthage” by J. M. W. Turner depicts the classic story from Virgil’s Aeneid in which Dido, the figure in blue and white on the left, is directing the builders of the new city of Carthage. The figure in front of her, wearing armor, is her Trojan lover Aeneas.

The children playing with a toy boat symbolize the future naval power of Carthage, and the tomb of her dead husband Sychaeus, on the right bank of the estuary, foreshadows the eventual destruction of Carthage by the Roman descendants of Aeneas.

The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1815 and was widely admired, but Turner kept the picture until his death and left it to the nation in the Turner Bequest.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, later more commonly called J. M. W. Turner, entered the Royal Academy of Art in 1789, aged 14, and his first watercolor was accepted for the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1790 when Turner was 15.

From a young art student trained in executing topographical watercolors, he became one of the most original artists of his time.

Turner was a Romantic painter, printmaker, and watercolorist, today known for his vivid coloration, imaginative landscapes, and turbulent marine paintings.

As a private, eccentric, and reclusive figure, Turner was controversial throughout his career. He left over 2,000 paintings and 19,000 drawings and sketches.

Dido

Dido was, according to ancient Greek and Roman sources, the founder and first queen of Carthage. Today she is primarily remembered for her role in the epic,

Aeneid, by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Aeneas, her lover leaves Carthage to found a city in Italy, leaving behind a broken-hearted Dido who committed suicide by stabbing herself.

Aeneas

Aeneas was according to Greco-Roman mythology, a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite (Venus).

His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas a second cousin to Hector and Paris. He is mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, but in Roman mythology, he is an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, who were the founders of Rome.

Carthage

Carthage became the capital city of the ancient Carthaginian civilization, located on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in current-day Tunisia.

A town developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of an empire dominating the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC.

The Carthaginian empire became a threat to the Roman Empire, and its ancient city was destroyed by the Roman Republic in the Third Punic War in 146 BC and was later re-developed as Roman Carthage.

The Roman city was captured and occupied by Muslim conquest in 698.

Carthage Foundation Legends

According to Roman history, Phoenician colonists from modern-day Lebanon, led by Dido, founded Carthage c. 814 BC. Dido was an exiled princess of the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre.

At its peak, the metropolis she founded ruling 300 other cities around the western Mediterranean Sea and leading the Phoenician world.

Virgil’s Roman epic, the Aeneid, first introduces Queen Dido. Virgil ends his legend of Dido with the story that, when Aeneas farewells Dido, her heartbroken, she orders a pyre to be built where she falls upon Aeneas’ sword.

As she lies dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas’ people and her own. Aeneas goes on to found the predecessor-state of the Roman Kingdom.

Dido Building Carthage

Title: Dido Building Carthage
Alternative: The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire
Artist: J. M. W. Turner
Date: 1815
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: H: 155.5 cm (61.22 in.); W: 232 cm (91.34 in.)
Type: Mythological Painting
Museum: The National Gallery, London

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Name: Joseph Mallord William Turner
Born: 1775 – Covent Garden, London, England
Died: 1851 (aged 76) – Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, England
Nationality: English
Movement: Romanticism
Notable works:
- The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons
- The Fighting Temeraire
- Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino
- The Burning of the Houses of Parliament
- Newport Castle
- The Grand Canal, Venice
- Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway
- Dido Building Carthage
- Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth
- The Slave Ship
- Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps

JMW Turner and the Love of Art

J.M.W. Turner Film

Dido building Carthage – Turner

Carthage Quotes

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“Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed.” – Cato the Elder

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“Don’t tell me violence doesn’t solve anything. Look at Carthage.” – Robert A. Heinlein

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“God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.” – Hannibal

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“Cato never gave his opinion in the Senate upon any other point whatever, without adding these words, “And, in my opinion, Carthage should be destroyed.” – Plutarch

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“Carthage was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from whence it had been raised by the Phoenician colonies and Roman laws; every step of intestine discord was marked by some deplorable victory of savage man over civilized society.” – Edward Gibbon

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Explore the National Gallery

16th Century Paintings

“Mystic Nativity” by Sandro Botticelli – 1550
“Virgin of the Rocks” by Leonardo da Vinci – 1506
“The Madonna of the Pinks” by Raphael – 1507
“The Raising of Lazarus” by Sebastiano del Piombo– 1519
“Salvator Mundi” by Andrea Previtali – 1519
“Bacchus and Ariadne” by Titian – 1523
“The Ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the Younger – 1533
“Mary Magdalene” by Girolamo Savoldo – 1540
“Saint George and the Dragon” by Tintoretto – 1558
“The Family of Darius before Alexander” by Paolo Veronese – 1567
“Diana and Actaeon” by Titian – 1569
“The Rape of Europa” by Paolo Veronese – 1570
“The Death of Actaeon” by Titian – 1575
“The Origin of the Milky Way” by Tintoretto – 1575

17th Century Paintings

“Supper at Emmaus” by Caravaggio – 1601
“Samson and Delilah” by Peter Paul Rubens – 1610
“The Judgement of Paris” by Peter Paul Rubens – 1635
“Aurora abducting Cephalus” by Peter Paul Rubens – 1637
“Equestrian Portrait of Charles I” by Anthony van Dyck – 1638
“Venus at her Mirror” by Diego Velázquez – 1651
“Self Portrait at the Age of 63″ by Rembrandt – 1669
“A Young Woman standing at a Virginal” by Johannes Vermeer – 1670

18th Century Paintings

“Bacchus and Ariadne” by Sebastiano Ricci – 1713
“A Regatta on the Grand Canal” by Canaletto – 1740
“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews” by Thomas Gainsborough – 1749
“Eton College” by Canaletto – 1754
“An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” by Joseph Wright of Derby – 1768
“Self-portrait in a Straw Hat” by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun – 1782

19th Century Paintings

“Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel” by Francisco Goya – 1805
“The Emperor Napoleon I” by Horace Vernet – 1815
“Dido Building Carthage” by J. M. W. Turner – 1815
“Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows” by John Constable – 1831
“The Execution of Lady Jane Grey” by Paul Delaroche – 1833
“The Fighting Temeraire” by Joseph Mallord William Turner – 1839
“Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway” by J. M. W. Turner – 1844
“Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna is carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence” by Frederic Leighton – 1855
“Madame Moitessier” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres– 1856
“The Gare St-Lazare” by Claude Monet – 1877
“Bathers at Asnières” by Georges Seurat – 1884
“Sunflowers” by Vincent van Gogh – 1888
“After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself” by Edgar Degas – 1895
“Boulevard Montmartre at Night” by Camille Pissarro – 1898

20th Century Paintings

“Misia Sert” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir – 1904
“Portrait of Hermine Gallia” by Gustav Klimt – 1904
Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) by Paul Cézanne – 1905
“Men of the Docks” by George Bellows – 1912
“Water-Lilies” by Claude Monet (National Gallery, London) – 1916

Joseph Mallord William Turner

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“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
– William Shakespeare

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Photo Credit: 1) [Public domain, GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

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