Aeneas' departure from Carthage

They are two pieces from a wider original set, which is known to be composed by at least other eighty two, distributed by several museums and private collections, among which we emphasize the following: fifteen plaques at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, eleven at the Louvre, seven at the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore), two at the County Museum of Art of Los Angeles and one at the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge).
It is likely that the original work of this unknown artist (who is believed by some, although without certainty, to be Jean Pénicaud I11) had been ordered to decorate a private room. The paintings recreate, with a few changes (such as the reduction of the number of figures and the introduction of polychromatism) the engravings of Johann Grüninger, an artist that worked for the German publishing house named after him, which published in 1502 the Latin version of the complete works of Virgil. In this case, "Aeneas’ Departure from Carthage", In the blue sea, three ships appear, with two characters in the first one, eight in the second (in which there is the inscription “ENEAS”) and two in the third. On the right side of the painting one can see the edge of water with green vegetation followed by a brown fortress. In one of its windows, there is a figure with the inscription “DIDO”. The sky is in cobalt blue and golden tones. The painting, the chromatic reproduction of Grüninger’s illustration Nr. 100 for the 1502 edition of Virgil’s works, depicts the moment in Aeneid’s fourth book when Dido, after cursing Aeneas, the man she had received as guest, sees the departure of the ships. Virgil portrayed this moment remarkably: “Soon as the queen from her watch-tower saw the Light whiten and the fleet move on with even sails, and knew the shores and harbours were void of oarsmen...” (Aeneid, p. 435)