Plaque "Episode from the Aeneid: Dido can build a pyre and offerings to the gods", c. 1502, Limoges. Copper & glass flux and metal oxide & Gold, Polychrome enamel painting and gold drawing. Height: 23.0 - Width: 20. Ident.Nr. K 5098. 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. Dido can then build a funeral pyre and the gods sacrifice (Book IV, verse 433 ff.): In fulfilling its mission Aeneas took note of his lover farewell.In the background, he is sitting in a boat, on him a "angel" who reminded him of his task. In the middle distance Dido and her sister Anna before an altar on which a "priest", the wine sacrifices to which turns into blood before Dido's eyes. Right of decorated with a funeral wreath pyre on which the mementos are to be burned to her lover. They can be seen on the left in the background in a chamber: The common place to sleep, his weapons and a blanket with his woven image. 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