Death of Dido 1663 - 1733

Gerard Hoet painted the ‘Death of Dido’ sometime between 1668 and 1733 with oil on canvas. Here we see a queen choosing death over a broken heart, an event taken from Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid. Hoet was working during the Dutch Golden Age, a period of unprecedented economic and cultural growth for the Netherlands. The Dutch Republic distinguished itself through its religious tolerance and republican values, and the art market was open. This meant that artists often created works for private patrons, rather than for the church or aristocracy. The cultural references here are clearly classical, and in that sense, conservative, but the Dutch Republic was self-consciously modeled on the Roman Republic. In its own way, it critiqued the dominant political institutions of Europe. To understand this painting better, we need to look at the history of the book trade, the role of classical education in the Dutch Republic, and of course, the visual culture of the Dutch Golden Age.