Location

117A Italian Renaissance

Fun Fact

Dido’s nudity and hairstyle are allusions to ancient Greek images of Aphrodite.

Description

Artists customarily portrayed Dido as a forlorn lover abandoned by the Trojan hero, Aeneas, but here she is a conquering queen. Dido draws aside an oxhide curtain, a reference to the mythical founding of Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia, North Africa), when she was given an oxhide to demarcate granted land. By cutting it into thin strips she was able to encircle the future city. Dido was likely created for display in a studiolo, a place of study featuring refined works of art appreciated by humanist scholars and aficionados during the Renaissance.

Inscriptions

Inscription

PVNICA SVM [DIDO ERE]XI QVAE MOENIA BYRSA

Inscription Remark

inscribed on lower edge

Aurelio Lombardo

Italian sculptor, 1501-1563

Provenance

Private Collection, England

June 30, 1988

Henry Duke & Son, Dorchester, England

Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, in association with Daniel Katz, Ltd., London

Barbara Piasecka Johnson (1937-2013), Princeton, Sobótka, Poland

December, 14, 1999

[Christie's Sale: Collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, December, 14, 1999, London, lot 74]

Hester Diamond (1928-2020), New York, NY

January 29, 2021

[Sotheby's Sale: The Collection of Hester Diamond Part I, January 29, 2021, New York, NY, lot 120]

2021-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Schulz, Anne Markham, and Giammaria Mosca. Giammaria Mosca Called Padovano: A Renaissance Sculptor in Italy and Poland. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. no. 1, p. 61

Christie, Manson & Woods. European Sculpture. 1999. lot 74

Luchs, A. "The London Woman in Anguish, attributed to Christoforo Solari: Erotic Pathos in a Renaissance Bust," Artibus et Historiae no. 47 (2003). pp. 158, 159, 163 and 172, fig. 12

Lombardo, Antonio, and Matteo Ceriana. Gli Este a Ferrara: il camerino di alabastro : Antonio Lombardo e la scultura all'antica. Cinisello Balsamo, Milano: Silvana, 2004. pp. 269 and 271

Sarchi, Alessandra. Antonio Lombardo. Venezia: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2008. p. 372, pl. 162

Luchs, Alison, Tullio Lombardo, and Adriana Augusti Ruggeri. Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2009. p. 120

Kurkow, Cory. “Defiant Dido: Shaking up the Italian Renaissance sculpture collection.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 3 (Summer 2021): 34-35. Reproduced: P. 35; Mentioned: P. 34.

Exhibition history

Long Term Loan, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (September – December 2006)