Aeneas Rescuing Anchises from Burning Troy

CC0 Public Domain Designation

1605/20

Hendrick van Steenwijck the Younger (Flemish, 1580/82-1649)

Anchises, former lover of the goddess Aphrodite, is here shown as an old man asleep in bed. In the background at right, seemingly disconnected from the quiet bedchamber, his home city of Troy burns. In this rendition of the Classical story, Hendrick van Steenwijck drops the viewer into a moment of suspended action as Anchises’s demigod son, Trojan hero Aeneas, rushes in to save his father and carry him to safety. Throughout, Steenwijck emphasizes contrasts between father and son: age and youth, light and dark, peace and chaos. The crisp and detailed depiction of the room itself attests to Steenwijck’s expertise in painting architectural interiors, a specialty he shared with his artist wife, Susanna van Steenwijck.

Status: On View, Gallery 208
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Hendrick van Steenwijck, the Younger
Title: Aeneas Rescuing Anchises from Burning Troy
Place: Flanders (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1605–1620
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 22.6 × 31.5 cm (8 7/8 × 12 3/8 in.); Framed: 29.6 × 38.5 × 6.1 cm (11 5/8 × 15 1/8 × 2 3/8 in.)
Credit Line: Wirt D. Walker Endowment
Reference Number: 1962.817
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/88619/manifest.json

Timothy Trent Blade, “Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger’s ‘Aeneas Rescuing Anchises from Burning Troy,’” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 5 (1970), pp. 39-52, figs. 1, 4, 8.
Johnny van Haeften, Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings, London, 1992, n.p, under no. 30.
Mireille Galinou and John Hayes, London in Paint: Oil Paintings in the Collection of the Museum of London, London, 1996, p. 33, n. 3.
Jeremy Howarth, The Steenwyck Family as Masters of Perspective: Hendrick van Steenwyck the Elder (c. 1550-1603), Hendrick Steenwyck the Younger (1580/82-1649) Susanna van Steenwyck (Dates Unknown-Active 1639-c. 1660), Turnhout, 2009, pp. 254-5, no. II E. 4.

Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Leonaert Bramer (1596-1675), A Painter of the Night, December 3, 1992-February 28, 1993, cat. 65.

Walter John Montagu-Douglas-Scott, 8th duke of Buccleuch, Boughton House, Kettering, Northamptonshire, from at least 1912 to 1946 [1912 Boughton House inventory, no. 158]; sold Christie’s, London, 1 November 1946, lot 137, to Soukup for 30 guineas [according to annotated catalogue in Ryerson Library]. Charlotte Frank, London, to 1962; sold by Charlotte Frank to the Art Institute of Chicago December 1962.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.