Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Anchises.
The gallery
Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1618–1619
Early marble group by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese and still in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. Aeneas carries his aged father Anchises out of burning Troy while the boy Ascanius follows — three generations stacked into a single spiralling column of pietas.
Aeneas and Anchises
Pierre Lepautre, c. 1697
Marble group by Pierre Lepautre in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Aeneas supports Anchises, who clutches the Palladium — the sacred image that will travel with them from burning Troy toward the destiny Virgil charts for Rome.
Venus and Anchises
Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin, 1822
Oil painting by Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin, Salon of 1822, Louvre collection on long-term loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret, Nice. Venus claims the Dardanian herdsman Anchises — the mortal love that begets Aeneas and, in the Homeric Hymn, nearly costs Anchises his life when he boasts of the goddess.
Venus and Anchises
Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1826
Oil painting by the English history painter Benjamin Robert Haydon. Venus appears to Anchises on Mount Ida — the encounter that makes a herdsman the father of Rome's Trojan ancestor, painted with the muscular neoclassical gravity Haydon prized.
Venus and Anchises
William Blake Richmond, 1889–1890
Oil painting by William Blake Richmond. Venus draws Anchises into an embrace amid a classical landscape — late Victorian myth-painting that keeps the Dardanian lover as Aphrodite's chosen mortal rather than only the burden on Aeneas' shoulders.
In play
Aeneid
Virgil
Virgil makes Anchises the father Aeneas carries from burning Troy — and later the shade who shows Rome's future in the underworld.
Anchises
Anchises remains Aphrodite's mortal lover and the root of Rome's Trojan claim — the herdsman struck by lightning for boasting of the goddess.