Aeneas Offering Presents to King Latinus and Asking Him for the Hand of His Daughter

Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1779, this ambitious history painting draws on the seventh book of Virgil's Aeneid, where Aeneas arrives in Latium, is received by King Latinus, and asks for the hand of Lavinia. The subject was a deliberate exercise in classical narrative painting at a moment when French academic painters were increasingly turning to ancient literary sources — Homer, Virgil, Livy — as a counterweight to what critics saw as the moral triviality of Rococo. Regnault had returned from his Roman studies deeply marked by the antique, and this large-scale work demonstrated his capacity for the gravitas expected of history painting at the highest level. The diplomatic and dynastic nature of the scene — an envoy presenting gifts, a king deliberating, a daughter's fate hanging on a political negotiation — gave Regnault opportunities to differentiate character through pose, gesture, and expression in the manner prescribed by academic theory. The work was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and remains one of the most substantial examples of Regnault's ambition as a history painter.

Regnault manages a large figure group by distributing figures across a classical architectural space. Warm foreground flesh tones are balanced against cooler marble and textile passages. Each figure's gesture contributes to the rhetorical narrative — the gifts displayed, the king's receptive pose, the surrounding court's attentive reaction.