Plaque "Episode from the Aeneid: The crossing of Aeneas to Sicily", c. 1502, Limoges. Copper & glass flux and metal oxide & Gold, Polychrome enamel painting and gold drawing. Height: 22.7 - Width: 20.2. Ident.Nr. K 5097. Kunstgewerbemuseum © Photo: Museum of Decorative Arts of the National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage. 

Episode from the most popular story in Virgil's Aeneid, the love story between the Carthaginian Queen Dido and the Trojan Aeneas. Meanwhile divine purpose is the founding of Rome, which is why he has to leave Dido. Portrayed is the crossing of Aeneas to Sicily (Book V, verse 1 ff.): At the gates of Carthage is in the background to see the pyre to burn on the Dido of grief over the loss of her lover. In the foreground, the ship of Aeneas and his followers drives towards new shores. Left middle distance are the Trojans from Acestes, a former companion, welcomed in Sicily. The main characters - Dido, Anna, Aeneas - are characterized by tapes with their names. . The composition of these as the other 81 known today emails follows woodcuts of the first illustrated Virgil edition, published in 1502 by Johann Grüninger in Strasbourg 
Among the Limousin painter emails take the tablets of the named after this episode Master in many ways a special position: In style as Iconography they are unique, also has been no further project of this scope, and become based on the same template, known. Is seen also technically the result remarkable. It combines, in almost equal parts, comprehensive and transparent glass flows (without paillons), a procedure which was perhaps borrowed from the goldsmith's art. Also falling in the tables of Aeneas-master of high-gloss image carrier under the transparent glass on rivers, the copper plate is undoubtedly subjected to special treatment. 
The original function of the panels is unknown. Aeneas may have been viewed by the principal of the episode prefiguring. On a Trojan descent, many families and communities of Europe in the 16th century appealed. It is conceivable, as has repeatedly suggested that the boards have served for a jewelry cabinet d'émaux and were admitted there in a wood paneling. This would have the miniatures-cabinets other princes and scholars met, except that the image-bearing wood, parchment or paper was not but copper. 
The two Berlin panels are the earliest of the episode, which can be documented to date.Kugler described it already in 1838. 
SN