Aeneas and Dido make their way towards the cave (sketch)

Aeneas and Dido Make Their Way Towards the Cave, dated 1712 and held at Palazzo Buonaccorsi in Macerata, depicts the famous episode from Virgil's Aeneid Book IV: the Trojan hero Aeneas and Carthaginian queen Dido, caught in a storm during a hunting expedition, take shelter in a cave where their love affair begins — an event that will ultimately end in Dido's tragic death. The subject was enormously popular in Baroque art, combining erotic tension with narrative grandeur from the most prestigious of ancient Roman texts. By 1712 Solimena was at the height of his fame, a court painter figure whose mythological canvases were sought by European collectors from Vienna to London. This preparatory or independent sketch reflects his facility with complex multi-figure compositions.

Solimena's sketches for mythological compositions show his most spontaneous brushwork — rapid, gestural strokes that establish tonal masses and compositional rhythms without final finish. The sketch format reveals his working process: blocking major figures in warm ochre and dark brown before detailed modeling.