The composition is based upon one of the nine episodes from the story of Aeneas, an episode of Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid (I, 135).The story tells how Neptune, who was angry with the winds who Juno released to start a storm and harass the Trojan hero Aeneas, berates them for causing the tempest without his approval. Neptune addresses the winds “Quos ego…” (Whom I…). In 1516, Marcantonio Raimondi created the engraving after Raphael’s designs which included several vignettes illustrating stories from the Aeneid, including one on the lower right side of the plate labeled “AENEAN RECIPIT PULCHRA CARTHAGINE DIDO"1 and which the maiolica painter adopted for this composition here (fig. 1). This engraving was a source of designs frequently used by maiolica painters in Urbino.
The specific scene illustrates the moment when Aeneas comes to the city of Carthage. Worried for his safety, Venus, his mother, devises a plot to protect him and sends Cupid to the city disguised as Aeneas' son Ascanius, to make Dido, Queen of Carthage, fall in love with the Trojan hero.
Nicola da Urbino’s work is identifiable thanks to five dishes marked on the back with his name or monogram. His elegant and classical style of painting made him one of the preeminent istoriato painters in Urbino, often hailed as “the Raphael of maiolica painting.”
The composition of this beautifully rendered dish, with its use of architectural elements to create a sense of depth and the warmer flesh tones of his figures is notable in Nicola’s work from 1528 onwards. The painter’s close adherence to graphic sources was also notable in this period.
However, the peaceful, polished, treatment of the figures and scene suggests that this piece may be attributable to the anonymous artist who has been dubbed "The Milan Marsyas Painter" by John Mallet. Mallet identified a group of pieces which share similar stylistic traits to the inscribed dish (depicting Marsyas) in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan (inv. 133). This anonymous artist's style is very similar to that of Nicola da Urbino's early work, and it is highly probable that he worked in the same workshop as Nicola (fig. 2).
1T. Wilson, Italian maiolica and Europe, Oxford, 2017, p. 131, no. 21.