Among the most important polychrome enamel cycles produced in Limoges in the first half of the 16th century,
the one attributed to the Aeneid Master, deduced from the engravings conceived by Sebastian Brant for Johann
Grüninger’s printed edition (1502), constitutes a unicum of exceptional importance, not just for the articulation and
complexity of the iconographic program, for the absolute preciousness of the result and for the cultural references, but also
because it is set at a crucial moment in the history of the applied arts, in the transition between the ancient late-Gothic
taste and the new Renaissance instances. First transposition on enamel of a profane subject, this cycle has aroused great
interest since the end of the 19th century, but, although widely cited in art-historical literature, surprisingly it has never
been the subject of any specific study except that of Marquet de Vasselot dating back at the beginning of the 20th century.
The recent discovery in Friuli of one of these enamels, of which traces had been lost for more than a century, is an opportunity
for an analysis of the cycle and to deepen the relationship between the Virgilian text, the engraving model and
the translation on enamel.
