Aeneas Carries Anchises from the Burning City of Troy

Although the composition reproduces figures from Raphael's "Fire in the Borgo," from the Stanza del' Incendio in the Vatican, the subject returns to the classical type that was Raphael's (and Pope Leo X's) inspiration: devotion to "pater" and to "patria" in war, shown by Aeneas in rescuing his father Anchises and his son Ascanius from the burning city of Troy. The group of three figures is the principal motif of the left side of Rapahel's fresco. Behind them rise suggestive columns of smoke, although there is no landscape and townscape within the constricted space of the painting. For a discussion of this motif and the subject of the Raphael painting more generally, see Paul Joannides, "The Drawings of Raphael" (1983), pp.104-105, cat. no. 367, in which Anchises is identified with Cosimo de' Medici "Il Vecchio" and Ascanius with Giovanni de' Medici, that is, Leo X. For the literary source of the classical subject, see Virgil's "Aeneid," Book 2, lines 705-724.