Virgil (70-19 BC) is considered one of the greatest poets of ancient Rome. Arguably his best-known work is the “Aeneid,” the epic account of Aeneas’s search for a new homeland, which follows a similar pattern to Homer’s epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” At the time of Virgil’s death, however, the “Aeneid” was left unfinished.
Despite being an unfinished work, “Aeneid” is among one of the most important poems in the history of Western literature and is widely considered the poet’s best work. When Virgil recited excerpts from the work before the Emperor Augustus, it is said that the shock was such that it caused the emperor’s sister Octavia to fail.
“Aeneid” consists of 12 books that describe the journey of Aeneas, the mythical ancestor of Romulus and Remus (founders of the city of Rome), as he flees to Italy from Troy, fights with the local prince Turnus, and founds a city on which Rome would be built. The work is said to have been commissioned by Augustus and may have modeled Homer’s work, with the “Odyssey” being stylistically similar to the first 6 books of the “Aeneid” and the “Iliad” bearing the same relationship to the last 6 books. of Virgil. great job. Throughout the story, Virgil recounts mythical events including: Aeneas’ escape from Troy and Juno’s attempts to interfere in Aeneas’s fate by driving his fleet ashore in Africa; the favor granted to Aeneas by Dido, the queen of Carthage; the story of the Greek betrayal at Troy involving a gigantic wooden horse, the death of Laocoon, the escape of Aeneas and members of his family, and the journey of his fleet to land at Carthage; Aeneas’ abandonment of Dido and subsequent suicide by him; the death of Anchises (father of Aeneas); Aeneas’ journey to the underworld; the Trojan settlement in Lazio; and the epic fought between Aeneas and Turno.
Virgil’s “Eclogues” (also known as the “Bucolics”) is a collection of 10 poems on rustic themes in the style of the Greek poet Theocritus. Following the publication of these works, they became popular performance pieces on the Roman stage. With a combination of political commentary and eroticism, they contributed to Virgil’s fame. Eclogues 1 and 9 deal with issues related to the frequent confiscations of land that occurred in the Empire and the consequent effects in the countryside. Eclogues 2 and 3 are heavily based on the agricultural environment and deal with homosexual and panerotic themes. Eclogue 4, known as the ‘Messianic Eclogue’, links the birth of a child with the announcement of a Golden Age. Eclogues 5 and 8 deal with the myth of Daphnis -the mythical shepherd, flutist and inventor of pastoral poetry- in a singing contest. Eclogue 6 describes the mythological song of Silenus, the companion and tutor of Dionysus. Eclogue 7 deals with a heated contest between poets. Eclogue 10 describes the life of one of Virgil’s contemporaries, the poet Cornelius Gallus, a man believed to have been instrumental in repatriating land previously confiscated from Virgil.
The “Georgics” include four books dealing with agricultural matters; the title “Georgics” is derived from the Greek term for ‘to work the earth’. The Books respectively deal with raising crops (Book 1), growing trees (Book 2), raising cattle and horses (Book 3), and beekeeping (Book 4). Tradition holds that Maecenas, a political adviser and confidant of Octavian (later Emperor Augustus), convinced Virgil to spend time on the “Georgics”.
In addition to the “Eclogues”, the “Georgics” and the “Aeneid”, a collection of small poetic works survived until the Renaissance. So, too, were numerous surviving examples of attempts to complete the “Aeneid”, including Maffeo Vegio’s of 1428. It was that collection of works that caught the attention of Sebastian Brandt (1457-1521), the German Renaissance humanist and Satirical: at the beginning of the 16th century, when Johannes Gruninger commissioned him to edit the complete works of Virgil for the first illustrated edition.
Brandt had studied in Basel and became a doctor of law in 1489. In the intellectual whirlwind of the Renaissance, Brandt was drawn to humanist circles and gained a degree of popularity with his Latin poetry. His literary endeavors continued apace, and in 1494 his “Das Narrenschiff” (“The Ship of Fools”) was published; it was a work that received wide popular acclaim and has been identified as an important precursor to the Protestant Reformation.
It was from the workshops associated with Gruninger’s printing works that the artwork for the 1502 Edition was prepared and it was that reference that leaves us with the title of “Late Master of the Gruninger Workshops” for the artist responsible. The honorific, “Master”, indicating the importance of the illustrations accompanying the 1502 Edition of “Opera”. The suite is a positive tour de force, incorporating many two-page and full-page illustrations, as well as woodcuts embedded in the text. Altogether, with more than 210 woodcuts included in the suite, it deserves to be an important work, but it is also the utterly endearing description of Virgil’s text that marks the suite as a masterpiece.