Detail of the Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet by Claude Lorrain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2014

The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet

Artist: Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) (French, Chamagne 1604/5?–1682 Rome)

Date: ca. 1643

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 41 3/8 x 59 7/8 in. (105.1 x 152.1 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1955

Accession Number: 55.119

In an effort to end years of wandering after the fall of Troy, the Trojan women set fire to their ships. The clouds and rain in the distance presage the storm sent by Jupiter at Aeneas’s request to quench the blaze. This painting was made in Rome for cardinal Girolamo Farnese. The subject, drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid (V:604–95), must have especially appealed to the learned prelate who returned to Rome in 1643, after years of itinerant service as papal nuncio combating Calvinism in remote Alpine cantons of the Swiss Confederation.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435908