The Death Of Dido
The Death Of Dido by A Follower of Italian Painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591 – 1666); also known as Guercino of the Italian Baroque Era, was also a draftsman
This painting is based on the Greek Mythological Legend of Dido, the reputed founder of Carthage first queen of the Phoenician City-State in 814 B.C. She was the daughter of the Tyrian King Mutto (or Belus) and his wife Sychaeus (or Acerbas); and she is also known by the name Elissa.
In this scene we see the grief stricken Dido lying on a pyre which he had built to burn the body and all of the belongings of the Trojan hero and her lover Aeneas; and in her misery she throws herself onto the pyre, stabbing herself in the process by falling on the sword of Aeneas.
She is wearing pearl studded gold crown on her auburn colored hair, long heavy floral embroidered gold and brown colored dress, with satin brown sleeves that have cross silver accents placed over gold cross striped material, and cuffs with silver ornamentation.
She is partially lifted up by her left hand and supported by her right forearm on the pyre with a sword piercing her chest below her left breast and coming out of her back, as she looks in anguish into the distance.
Since the background was a bad mish-mash of compression artifacts and blurs consisting of blocks of blue, purple, orange, green, white and black colors; I decided to replace the background with Perlin Noise to create a smoke like background, which nicely accents the area behind her head and shoulders.
This is a remastered digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image that is available as a canvas print online.
