Latest news with #Aeneas
Economist
23-04-2025
- Economist
The Carthaginians weren't who you think they were
MANY LEGENDS attend the beginning of Carthage, an ancient city in modern-day Tunisia. Its founder, Queen Dido, a refugee from the Phoenician city of Tyre (now in Lebanon), is supposed to have made an agreement with the local king to take as much land for her putative city as could be bounded by a bull's hide—and then cut the hide into narrow strips and attached them end to end to encompass the hill that became and remained the city's centre. Later, she is said to have taken as her lover Aeneas, a Trojan prince fleeing his own native city after its destruction by a Greek army.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
UK gallery to return Nazi-looted painting to heirs of Jewish collector
The Tate Britain gallery is set to reunite the great-grandchildren of a Belgian Jewish art collector with a painting looted from his home by the Nazis, officials said on Saturday. "Aeneas and his Family Fleeing Burning Troy" was stolen from the home of Samuel Hartveld after he fled Antwerp with his wife in May 1940. The artwork by English painter Henry Gibbs was one of hundreds of thousands the Nazis plundered from Jewish families during World War II. Their restitution has been a slow process, often involving legal battles and complex international searches. The return of the 1654 oil painting will mark the latest triumph for a special panel set up by the UK government to investigate such works that have ended up in Britain's public collections. The Spoliation Advisory Panel ruled the "Aeneas" painting was "looted as an act of racial persecution" and has arranged for it to be returned to Hartveld's heirs in the coming months, the UK government's culture department said. A handover date has not yet been confirmed but Hartveld's family said they were "deeply grateful." "This decision clearly acknowledges the awful Nazi persecution of Samuel Hartveld and that the 'clearly looted' painting belonged to Mr Hartveld, a Jewish Belgian art collector and dealer," the trust representing Hartveld's heirs and relatives said. The painting depicts the Trojan hero Aeneas trying to rescue his family from the burning city. It was produced in the wake of the English Civil War, when scenes of devastation and families being split up would have been familiar. The Tate collection bought the work from the Galerie Jan de Maere in Brussels in 1994, and the trust established by Hartveld's heirs launched a claim in May 2024. - Long recovery process - "It is a profound privilege to help reunite this work with its rightful heirs," said Tate director Maria Balshaw. "We now look forward to welcoming the family to Tate in the coming months and presenting the painting to them." Hartveld survived World War II but never recovered the art collection he had to leave behind. The family trust was started in 1986 by Sonia Klein, who was previously named in a will as the daughter of Hartveld's widow Clara, who died in 1951. Many artworks stolen by the Nazis were intended to be resold, given to senior officials or displayed in the Fuehrermuseum (Leader's Museum) that Adolf Hitler planned for his hometown of Linz but was never built. Just before the end of the war, the United States sent teams of museum directors, curators and art experts to Europe to rescue cultural treasures. Their efforts enabled the swift return of many of the looted works to their owners. But out of 650,000 stolen pieces, about 100,000 had not been returned by 2009, according to figures released at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in the Czech Republic that year. Returns this century have included France's 2018 restitution of Flemish master Joachim Patinir's "Triptych of the Crucifixion" to the descendants of the Bromberg family, who were forced to sell the work when they fled the Nazis. In the same year, a Berlin museum said it had formally restituted a 15th-century religious wooden sculpture to the heirs of the former owners, a Jewish couple who fled the Nazi regime. The jewel of gothic art remains in the museum under an accord struck with the heirs. The UK's Spoliation Advisory Panel said it had received 23 claims in the last 25 years and helped return 14 works to the heirs of their former owners. lcm/jkb/gil
South China Morning Post
29-03-2025
- South China Morning Post
UK museum to return painting looted by Nazis to Jewish art collector's heirs
The Tate Britain gallery is set to reunite the great-grandchildren of a Belgian Jewish art collector with a painting looted from his home by the Nazis, officials said on Saturday. Advertisement Aeneas and his Family Fleeing Burning Troy was stolen from the home of Samuel Hartveld after he fled Antwerp with his wife in May 1940. The artwork by English painter Henry Gibbs was one of hundreds of thousands the Nazis plundered from Jewish families during World War II. Their restitution has been a slow process, often involving legal battles and complex international searches. The return of the 1654 oil painting will mark the latest triumph for a special panel set up by the UK government to investigate such works that have ended up in Britain's public collections. Advertisement The Spoliation Advisory Panel ruled the Aeneas painting was 'looted as an act of racial persecution' and has arranged for it to be returned to Hartveld's heirs in the coming months, the UK government's culture department said.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
UK gallery to return Nazi-looted painting to heirs of Jewish collector
The Tate Britain gallery is set to reunite the great-grandchildren of a Belgian Jewish art collector with a painting looted from his home by the Nazis, officials said on Saturday. "Aeneas and his Family Fleeing Burning Troy" was stolen from the home of Samuel Hartveld after he fled Antwerp with his wife in May 1940. The artwork by English painter Henry Gibbs was one of hundreds of thousands the Nazis plundered from Jewish families during World War II. Their restitution has been a slow process, often involving legal battles and complex international searches. The return of the 1654 oil painting will mark the latest triumph for a special panel set up by the UK government to investigate such works that have ended up in Britain's public collections. The Spoliation Advisory Panel ruled the "Aeneas" painting was "looted as an act of racial persecution" and has arranged for it to be returned to Hartveld's heirs in the coming months, the UK government's culture department said. A handover date has not yet been confirmed but Hartveld's family said they were "deeply grateful." "This decision clearly acknowledges the awful Nazi persecution of Samuel Hartveld and that the 'clearly looted' painting belonged to Mr Hartveld, a Jewish Belgian art collector and dealer," the trust representing Hartveld's heirs and relatives said. The painting depicts the Trojan hero Aeneas trying to rescue his family from the burning city. It was produced in the wake of the English Civil War, when scenes of devastation and families being split up would have been familiar. The Tate collection bought the work from the Galerie Jan de Maere in Brussels in 1994, and the trust established by Hartveld's heirs launched a claim in May 2024. - Long recovery process - "It is a profound privilege to help reunite this work with its rightful heirs," said Tate director Maria Balshaw. "We now look forward to welcoming the family to Tate in the coming months and presenting the painting to them." Hartveld survived World War II but never recovered the art collection he had to leave behind. The family trust was started in 1986 by Sonia Klein, who was previously named in a will as the daughter of Hartveld's widow Clara, who died in 1951. Many artworks stolen by the Nazis were intended to be resold, given to senior officials or displayed in the Fuehrermuseum (Leader's Museum) that Adolf Hitler planned for his hometown of Linz but was never built. Just before the end of the war, the United States sent teams of museum directors, curators and art experts to Europe to rescue cultural treasures. Their efforts enabled the swift return of many of the looted works to their owners. But out of 650,000 stolen pieces, about 100,000 had not been returned by 2009, according to figures released at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in the Czech Republic that year. Returns this century have included France's 2018 restitution of Flemish master Joachim Patinir's "Triptych of the Crucifixion" to the descendants of the Bromberg family, who were forced to sell the work when they fled the Nazis. In the same year, a Berlin museum said it had formally restituted a 15th-century religious wooden sculpture to the heirs of the former owners, a Jewish couple who fled the Nazi regime. The jewel of gothic art remains in the museum under an accord struck with the heirs. The UK's Spoliation Advisory Panel said it had received 23 claims in the last 25 years and helped return 14 works to the heirs of their former owners. lcm/jkb/gil
CBC
11-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
The Aeneid, a 2,000-year-old poem that reads like a playbook for U.S. politics today
The new regime in Washington now has a taste for something that's very old: a global empire, the way ancient Rome aspired to have. U.S. President Donald Trump has talked of expanding America's reach, to Panama, to Gaza, to Greenland, and to Canada, to fulfil what he referred to in his second inaugural address as "Manifest Destiny." "The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons," President Trump said in his speech, Jan 21, 2025. We might have thought this kind of political thinking was dead and gone: the whole business of taking over someone else's land without their permission, the way Europeans conquered Indigenous lands centuries ago. But in the United States — and Russia, too — the idea of empire is making a late-stage comeback. "When President Trump chose me for this position, the primary charge he gave me was to bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defence," Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said during his Jan. 14 confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, warfighting, accountability and readiness." The Aeneid as a guide to imperialism One of the blueprints for imperialism has always been The Aeneid, by the Roman poet Virgil, working between 29 and 19 BCE. It tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan leader on the run with his son, carrying his aging father on his back, escaping with other refugees the burning city of Troy which had been laid siege by the Greeks, whose soldiers had hidden in a giant wooden horse. It picks up the story where Homer's Odyssey and Iliad leave off: Aeneas and his people sail west to found a new home in a land where they may or may not be welcome. At first, they're blown off course to North Africa, to Carthage, where Aeneas tells Queen Dido his war stories, and where Dido, against her best instincts, falls in love with him. But there's a problem: "pius" Aeneas, as he's called in the poem (meaning dutiful and, for lack of a better term, job-oriented) has his eyes on his mission to found a new city for his people, and doesn't have time for love. Heartbroken Dido kills herself. Eventually, Aeneas and crew land in Hesperia, what's now Italy, and do battle with the locals. The way Virgil saw it, long before Romlus and Remus were on the scene, this landing was the founding of Rome. In many ways, The Aeneid is a story of conquest meant to please his patron, Emperor Augustus, who was busy transforming Rome from a republic to an empire, and needed the good-news propaganda. Aeneas was the son of Venus, a goddess: therefore Rome, and her empire, are sanctioned by the heavens. That divine sanctioning of empire is what many leaders in the decades and centuries that followed took from the poem, too. "This text by Virgil — elite men were reading," Susanna Braund told IDEAS, a retired professor of classics at the University of British Columbia. "This formed their worldview. And when you look at the imperial projects of the British, and the Spanish and the Portuguese, these were guys who were totally raised on the idea that you go west and you bring your 'culture,' in scare quotes, to the 'uncultured natives' in scare quotes." But there is another way to read the poem. Look at the character of Dido, whose sad tale prompted an opera by Henry Purcell in the 17th century, which see her as more sympathetic, more worthy of attention than dutiful, dull and narrow-minded Aeneas. "There are people who see in the treatment of characters, particularly Dido, the tragic Carthaginian queen," said Daniel Mendlesohn, author of Ecstasy and Terror: From The Greeks to Game of Thrones. According to Mendlesohn, there's "a subversive view of the imperial project." A celebration of empire or critique? So was Virgil secretly building a critique of the Roman Empire into The Aeneid, right under Augustus' nose? It remains an open question. "When you read between the lines there are at the very least ambivalent attitudes present in the poem about empire," said classics professor Paul Hay. But Sarah Ruden, who has translated The Aeneid into English, adds the epic poem shows another side that focuses on humanity. "Virgil appears to be the first author who gives a sympathetic depiction of cannon fodder, of nobodies, of unheroic characters who don't want to be in war. "But they are humanized — they are real people to him. They have a past. They have a tragedy." And yet there have been many, including Benito Mussolini, who used The Aeneid to justify his own fascist goals (he famously subsidized the publication of the poem during his reign), who see the poem as a model for empire building. The lesson, however, for those who interpret it that way is simple: read it again. Daniel Mendelsohn is a writer and classicist in New York State. Susanna Braund is a retired professor of classics, University of British Columbia. Shadi Bartsch is a Helen A. Wegenstein distinguished professor of classics at the University of Chicago. Paul Krause is an instructor of humanities at Chesterton Academy of Albuquerque in New Mexico. Tedd Wimperis is an assistant professor of classical languages at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina. Paul Hay is a professor of classics at Hampton Sydney College in Hampton Sydney North Carolina. Sarah Ruden is a translator of Virgil's Aeneid in Connecticut. Ellen Harris is the author of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and a retired faculty member in music and theatre arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
