_Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675). _See_ 31.
Dido, Queen of Carthage, enamoured of the Trojan Æneas, the destined
founder of Rome, sought to detain him by strategy within her dominions.
The goddess Juno, who had espoused Dido's cause, contrived that a storm
should befall when the Queen and her guests were on a hunting party
(_Æneid_, iv. 119). In front of the cave a Cupid holds the horse of
Æneas, and two others are fluttering above. High in the clouds is Juno,
accompanied by Venus, who had contrived all this for Dido's undoing.
As for the execution of the picture, "the stormy wind blows loudly
through its leaves, but the total want of invention in the cloud-forms
bears it down beyond redemption. Look at the wreaths of _cloud_ (?),
with their unpleasant edges cut as hard and solid and opaque and smooth
as thick black paint can make them, rolled up over one another like a
dirty sail badly reefed"[93] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec.
iii. ch. iv. § 23; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 18).