GANDOLFI, Gaetano
(b. 1734, S Matteo della Decima, d. 1802, Bologna)

Venus at Vulcan's Forge

c. 1775
Oil on canvas, 52 x 34 cm
Private collection

This painting, depicting Venus ordering armour for Aeneas at Vulcan's forge, is a bozzetto, a preparatory sketch for the painting now in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The subject of the bozzetto comes from Virgil's Aeneid (8:370-385), in which the poet recounts how Venus visits Vulcan to ask him to make a set of armour for her son, the Trojan hero Aeneas, who was about to go to war in Latium.