2 Audley Square
Mayfair, London W1K
UK
Established in 1994, The Course offers exciting lectures in Art History, Literature and Music.
“Our classic, the classic of all Europe, is Virgil”, said T S Eliot in 1944. 75 years on, the UK is scheduled to leave the EU, but not European culture. What better moment could there be to retrace the journey Virgil created for Aeneas: escape from the Trojan inferno, voyage to Carthage, love for Dido, abandonment of her to found a new Troy at Rome, and pilgrimage to the Underworld, a golden bough as passport. Artists picture it all as if they travelled with him.
Aeneas and the Sibyl: Destination Underworld (v; vi)
Aeneas’s beloved helmsman Palinurus is drowned by the god Sleep. They land at Cumae, Aeneas consults the Sibyl, is guided to the golden bough, finds the door to the Underworld, crosses the River Styx, and meets Palinurus’s ghost and the three-headed dog Cerberus. Burne-jones, Crespi, Domenichino, Guercino, Hollar, Houbraken, Michelangelo, Rubens, Testa, Turner, van Swanenburg, Edder.