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| Pietro da Cortona Venus as Huntress appears to Aeneas 1631 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Sébastien Bourdon Venus and Aeneas ca. 1658-62 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Nicolas Poussin Venus presenting Arms to Aeneas 1639 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen |
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| Luca Giordano Venus presenting Arms to Aeneas ca. 1680-82 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Giovanni Francesco Romanelli Venus pouring Balm on the Wound of Aeneas before 1650 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Merry-Joseph Blondel Venus healing Aeneas before 1853 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Pier Leone Ghezzi Purification of Aeneas in the River Numicius, with Venus presiding ca. 1725 oil on canvas Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow |
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| Nathaniel Dance-Holland The Meeting of Dido and Aeneas ca. 1766 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Francesco Solimena Aeneas at the court of Dido ca. 1739-41 oil on canvas Museo di Capodimonte, Naples |
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| Claude Lorrain View of Carthage with Dido and Aeneas 1676 oil on canvas Kunsthalle, Hamburg |
Dido
Suppose you really do, toward the end, fall away into a sunset which is your own self-ignited pyre? is it any the less a sunset just because you stopped carrying the torch? I must pull myself together tomorrow early, is market dallying and this time I've got something to get rid of, inherited I'd never want. "Life has a way of making everything die." Should I now that the war is over voluntarily about face and shoot things squarely and in the middle to test the steadiness of my rust-covered hand which has been so dependable of late? I do not love hunting or any of the Roman positions, yet foreigners frighten the very shores! Am I too lady luck or nuts?
Once when the bishop's blague had become a kernel I raced to the nearest theatre "babes in arms" and earned some small relaxation, even though they all said it would ruin the babies' eyes. Would they were beggars these days! if only I weren't feeling sentimental, but how else can you get passionate? and I at least know that that's my devoir. Yes, dear heart, gloriously ruined, lamentably grey, the poor tattered plaything with a heart of whale blubber, is to be in Sydney Australia married to an architect! But this is most heartbreaking of all, for the truly grave is the most objective like a joke: you advance unawares while misery surrounds you on the lips in the bars, and it accepts you as the characteristic sibilance of its voice, hitherto somewhat less divine.
I could find some rallying ground like pornography or religious exercise, but really, I say to myself, you are too serious a girl for that. The leaves do not wither because it is winter, but because they stay there and know better, and they want what must happen, they are the lying down kind. If, when my cerise muslin sweeps across the agora, I hear no whispers even if they're really echoes, I know they think I'm on my last legs, "She's just bought a new racing car" they say, or "She's using mercurochrome on her nipples." They'd like to think so. I have a stevedore friend who tells everything that goes on in the harbor.
Well all right. But if this doesn't cost me the supreme purse, my very talent, I'm not the starlet I thought I was. I've been advertising in the Post Office lately. Somebody's got to ruin the queen, my ship's just got to come in.
– Frank O'Hara (first published – posthumously – in 1970)
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| Francesco Solimena Royal Hunt of Dido and Aeneas ca. 1712 oil on canvas (preparatory sketch) Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata |
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| Francesco Solimena Royal Hunt of Dido and Aeneas ca. 1712 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
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| Jean-Bernard Restout Aeneas and Dido fleeing the Storm ca. 1772-74 oil on paper, mounted on canvas (preparatory sketch) Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Rutilio Manetti Dido and Aeneas ca. 1630 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Pompeo Batoni Aeneas abandoning Dido 1747 oil on canvas private collection |