Virgil Writing His Epitaph

What it is

This is an engraved print from 1794, titled Virgil Writing His Epitaph, held by the Albertina Museum in Vienna. The catalogue record calls it a drawing, but the image is an engraved print. It shows a woman seated at a desk holding a scroll and writing, with a bust on a pedestal behind her. Two men lean in, and a woman in the foreground rests beside a lyre and a laurel wreath. The curator notes that the scene is later and imagined, not a record of an actual event.

Why it matters

Scenes like this one show how eighteenth-century artists pictured poets at work. The lyre, wreath and bust are symbols of poetic fame, and the print turns Virgil's writing of his own epitaph into a moment of reflection on death and reputation. It tells us what its makers and buyers valued in a poet, not what Virgil actually did.

Look closer

• Which objects in the print signal that this is a scene about poetry and fame?
• Why does the artist place a woman in the foreground, and what role does she seem to have?
• What would a viewer in 1794 have needed to know about Virgil to understand this scene?