Following the apotheosis of Aeneas, Ovid lists a succession of rulers of Latium and Alba, the city founded by Aeneas, until he reaches King Proca, who prompts his next stories of transformation, starting with the delightful cautionary tale of Pomona and Vertumnus, who lived during that king’s reign.

Pomona is a devoted and highly capable gardener, who cares for her plants with passion; shunning male company, she has no interest in the many men who seek her love. One, Vertumnus, god of seasons, gardens, and plant growth, loves Pomona more than any other, but is no more successful in attracting her. He is able to change his form at will, and in his quest for Pomona’s love he has posed as a reaper, a hedger, and in various other gardening roles. Through these he had been able to gain entry into her garden, but made no progress in winning her hand.

One day Vertumnus comes up with a new disguise as an old crone with a bonnet over her white hair, leaning on her walking stick. This too gets him into the garden, and he is able to engage the beautiful Pomona in conversation. Vertumnus almost gives himself away when he kisses her over-enthusiastically, but manages to control himself and tries giving Pomona some womanly advice about marriage by encouraging her to wed Vertumnus.

The Roman god Vertumnus was most famously painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, in his idiosyncratic portrait of Rudolf II of Hamburg from 1590. Given the nature of the god, Arcimboldo’s choice of fruit and flowers couldn’t have been more appropriate.

Most paintings of this story show Vertumnus in his disguise as an old crone, chatting up a beautiful, and quite fleshly, Pomona.

Francesco Melzi’s Vertumnus and Pomona (c 1518-28) follows Ovid’s account carefully, giving Vertumnus quite masculine looks to ensure the viewer gets the message. In the background is a wonderful Renaissance fantasy landscape with heaped-up hills similar to those seen in ancient Chinese landscapes.

Hendrik Goltzius gets close up in his Vertumnus and Pomona from 1613, and arms Pomona with a vicious-looking pruning knife. There is a wonderful contrast between the two women’s faces and hands here, making this a fine study of the effects of ageing.

Abraham Bloemaert’s Vertumnus and Pomona (1620) uses gaze to great effect: while the persuasive Vertumnus looks up at Pomona, her eyes are cast down, almost closing their lids.

Anthony van Dyck and Jan Roos collaborated in painting Vertumnus and Pomona in about 1625, which is remarkable for its rich symbolism and visual devices. Pomona has her left arm around Vertumnus, but in her right hand holds a silver sickle. She gazes wistfully into the distance, as if in a dream. Vertumnus is again looking up, pleading his case with the young woman, and his left hand (on a very muscular and masculine arm) is behind Pomona’s left knee, between her legs. At the right, Cupid grimaces at the deception, his back turned, pointing at what is going on with apparent disapproval. Then at the lower left corner is a melon cut open to reveal its symbolic form, with its juice and seeds inside as an overt anatomical allusion.

Adriaen van de Velde’s fine Vertumnus and Pomona from 1670 has been marred by the fading of the yellow he used to mix some of his greens, turning some of its foliage blue. He avoids any dangerous allusions, and returns to a more distant view of the pair talking together.

Jean Ranc’s startlingly contemporary Vertumnus and Pomona (c 1710-22) clothes the pair in the fashion of the day, but loses all reference to Pomona as a passionate gardener. At least Vertumnus’ hands are those of a man.

Seemingly influenced by the earlier painting of van Dyck and Roos, François Boucher puts the pair into an embrace in his Earth: Vertumnus and Pomona (1749), and Cupid’s mask play alludes to the deception.

Having cunningly promoted his own cause, Vertumnus tells Pomona the cautionary tale of Iphis and Anaxarete to press his case.

Iphis was a young man of humble origins, and unfortunately fell in love with the high-born Anaxarete. Knowing the hopelessness of his love for her, Iphis told her nurse, and persuaded her maids to take notes and flowers for her. Anaxarete’s response was iron-hearted and cruel: she laughed at him, and shut him out. Iphis was broken by this, and after a brief soliloquy, he hung himself from her door. Her servants cut his body down, but it was too late, he was dead. They carried his body to his widowed mother, who led it in funeral procession to the pyre. As she watched this from a window in an upper room in her house, Anaxarete was transformed into the cold stone of a statue.

Antonio Tempesta’s etching of Anaxarete Seeing the Dead Iphis (1606) condenses the story into a single image, in which Iphis hangs dead, and Anaxarete has just been transformed into stone in front of him, in what is really a form of multiplex narrative.

Virgil Solis adheres more rigorously to Ovid’s account, in his Iphis and Anaxarete, which must have been engraved before Solis’ death in 1562. His multiplex narrative incorporates two separate scenes: in the left foreground, the body of Iphis has been discovered hanging outside the door to Anaxarete’s house. In the right distance, Iphis’ corpse is carried to his funeral pyre, with his mother in close attendance, as Anaxarete looks on from her balcony, and is turned to stone.

Having tried trickery and his cautionary tale, Vertumnus is still getting nowhere with Pomona, so he transforms himself back into his own form, as a young man, which finally wins her heart. This brings Ovid’s conclusion that deception will fail, and success can only come through honesty.

It’s that outcome that Peter Paul Rubens hints at in his late oil sketch of Vertumnus and Pomona of 1636. There is now no pretence that Vertumnus is a woman: he lacks breasts, and even has heavy beard stubble. However, the embrace of his right arm still brings Pomona to push him away with her left arm.

Perhaps the outstanding depiction of this wonderful story is Rubens’ earlier and finished Vertumnus and Pomona from 1617-19. Vertumnus has assumed his real form, that of a handsome young man. Pomona looks back, her sickle still in her right hand, and her rejection of his advances is melting away in front of our eyes. Rubens even offers us a couple of rudely symbolic melons, and provides distant hints at Vertumnus doing the work in the garden while Pomona directs him, at the upper left.

Macareus, one of the survivors from the Odyssey, has been giving his account of the sojourn of Ulysses and his men on Circe’s island. Having told of their arrival and transformation into pigs, he concludes with a cautionary tale of what happens to those who don’t submit to Circe’s desires. One of Circe’s assistants showed Macareus a marble statue of a youth with a woodpecker on his head. When Macareus asked why that was in the shrine, the assistant explained that it all came about as a result of Circe’s magic powers.

Picus had been the king of Latium, and drew admiring glances from nymphs wherever he went. He fell in love with a beautiful young woman who sang so wonderfully that she was named Canens (Latin for singing), and they lived together in marital bliss. One day when Picus was out hunting on his horse, Circe caught sight of him from the undergrowth. Her desire for him was immediate and intense, so she worked her magic to lure the king into a thicket, in pursuit of a phantom boar she had conjured up.

Circe confronted him and told him of her desire, but he refused her in faithfulness to Canens. Despite Circe repeatedly pleading with him, Picus stood firm and refused her time and again. The sorceress became angry, warning him that he would pay for his obstinacy and would never return to his bride. She cast a spell and touched him with her wand, transforming him into a woodpecker.

When his courtiers searching for the king, they stumbled into the sorceress, and accused her of being responsible for his disappearance. She promptly transformed each of them into a wild animal as well. Picus’ wife Canens was beside herself with worry, and roamed the countryside looking for her husband. She pined away in her grief and vanished into thin air at a place now named after her. With that Macareus concludes his story.

The only dedicated account available of this myth is Luca Giordano’s Picus and Circe, probably painted around 1670. This shows Circe trying to seduce Picus, and the king resisting her advances. By their expressions, she has just told him that he will pay for his refusal, and is working her magic to transform him into a woodpecker. Already he has grown feathery wings, and at the upper right there is the silhouette of a woodpecker as an ominous reminder of the fate that awaits him at any moment.

There are more paintings showing Circe in the company of various enchanted birds and animals, including the former King Picus. Two of the more remarkable examples are both by Dosso Dossi, one painted in about 1515, the second probably fifteen years later.

Dossi’s Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape (c 1514-16) is a remarkably early and realistic mythological landscape, with deep rustic lanes, trees, and a distant farmhouse. Circe leans naked at the foot of a tree going through spells on a large tablet, with a book of magic open at her feet. Around her are some of the men who she took a fancy to and transformed into wild creatures. There’s a spoonbill, a small deer, a couple of dogs, a stag, and up in the trees an owl and what could well be a woodpecker, in the upper right corner.

Dossi’s later painting of Melissa (Circe) (c 1518-1531) is also set in a richly detailed landscape. Circe sits inside a magic circle, around which are inscribed cabalistic words. In the upper left corner are small homunculi apparently growing on a tree. On the left is a large dog, and perched on top of a suit of armour is a bird, most probably a woodpecker.

Once Aeneas has buried his nurse in a marble sepulchre, he and his crew set sail on the final leg of their journey from Troy to Latium in Italy.

Once they arrive, Aeneas and his former Trojans have to fight Turnus, king of the Rutuli, for Latinus’ throne and the hand of Lavinia in marriage. This proves a long and bitter struggle, in which Aeneas is aided by others, but among those who refuses to assist him is Diomede in Apulia. In defending his refusal to aid Aeneas, Diomede tells the story of his return from the Trojan War, which proved a desperate journey. His colleague Acmon had rashly speculated what more Venus could have done to harm them, and taunted her, for which she transformed them all into white seabirds. Venulus, Aeneas’ envoy to Diomede, also saw a grotto where a shepherd had offended Pan and been turned into an oleaster tree.

Antonio Tempesta’s etching of Acmon and his Friends Changed into Birds by Venus from about 1600 is the only pictorial representation that I have been able to find of that story told by Diomede, and for its period it tells it well.

During the war with Turnus, enemy forces are sent to burn Aeneas’ fleet of ships. As they were built with pinewood frames, they burned well. But Juno intervenes, brings a hailstorm, drags the burning ships underwater, and transforms them into sea-nymphs. The city of Ardea falls to Aeneas when he kills Turnus, and from its ashes and ruins comes the heron.

The single illustration that I have been able to find of the transformation of the burning Trojan ships into nymphs comes from one of the most precious documents featured in this series: the Vergilius Vaticanus manuscript of Virgil’s works dating back to about 400 CE. Three ships are seen already transformed into the head, arm, and body of nymphs at the far right, although there is no sign of any fire or hailstorm. The left and centre show Aeneas fighting Turnus.

The Vergilius Vaticanus is very special, as one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid, and one of only three ancient illustrated manuscripts containing classical literary works. At one time it belonged to Pietro Bembo, an Italian scholar who is commemorated in the font name.

Luca Giordano’s Aeneas and Turnus from the late 1600s is one of the few paintings showing the battle between Aeneas and Turnus. The Trojan hero here has Turnus on the ground, under his right foot. At the lower left is one of Aeneas’ ships, which hasn’t been transformed into a nymph. Venus, Aeneas’ mother, and Cupid, his half-brother, are at the upper left, and the goddess at the upper right is either Minerva (with her owl), or Juno; as losers in the Judgement of Paris, both bore a grudge against the Trojans.

With the end of Aeneas’ life drawing near, his mother Venus campaigns among the deities for him to be transformed into a god when he dies. They agree, as do Jupiter and Juno, allowing Venus to descend in her chariot drawn by doves. Aeneas is then washed thoroughly by the river Numicius before the goddess anoints him with nectar and ambrosia to transform him into the new god Indiges.

Peter Candid’s Aeneas Taken to Olympus by Venus from around 1600 shows Venus at the right, in her chariot with Cupid, anointing Aeneas, on the left, with nectar and ambrosia. Above them is the pantheon, arrayed in an imposing semicircle, and above them Jupiter himself, clutching his thunderbolts and ready to receive the new god.

Tiepolo’s sketch for a fresco ceiling in the Royal Palace in Madrid, The Apotheosis of Aeneas from about 1765, is another impressive account. The artist made this a little more elaborate by combining the apotheosis with the presentation of arms to Aeneas by his mother Venus. Aeneas is to the left of centre, dressed in prominent and earthly red. Above and to the right of him is his mother, Venus, dressed in white, ready to present the arms which have been forged for him by Vulcan, her partner, who is shown below supervising their fabrication. Aeneas’ destination is the Temple of Immortality, glimpsed above and to the left of him, through a break in the divine clouds.

Ovid then lists successive rulers of Latium and Alba, the city founded by Aeneas, up to the reign of King Proca, the setting for his next story.

Aeneas has been rowed through the Straits of Messina, avoiding the rock pinnacle that Scylla had been transformed into. From there he heads north-west until he meets a fierce northerly storm that blows him and his crew south to the city of Carthage, on the Libyan coast. Ovid breezes through what takes Virgil almost a whole book in the Aeneid, in a brief summary of the affair between Aeneas and Dido, Queen of Carthage. This ends with him abandoning her to fall upon the sword he had given her, and her body to be consumed on her funeral pyre.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s Aeneas tells Dido the misfortunes of the City of Troy, painted in about 1815, is probably the standard work showing the beginnings of their romance. Unfortunately it doesn’t give any clues to its tragic outcome.

In about 1875, when Paul Cézanne was still experimenting with narrative genres, he first drew a compositional study, then painted Aeneas Meeting Dido at Carthage. The queen is at the left, surrounded by her court. The warrior figure of Aeneas stands to the right of centre, and to the right of him is the shrouded spectre of Aeneas’ wife, Creusa, who had been abandoned by Aeneas as the family fled the burning city of Troy.

Normally titled The Death of Dido, Tiepolo’s painting from 1757-70 shows an odd composite scene in which Aeneas, packed and ready to sail with his ship, watches on as Dido suffers the agony of their separation, lying on the bed of her funeral pyre. A portentous puff of black smoke has just risen to the left, although it’s surely far too early for anyone to think of setting the timbers alight.

Dido’s spectacular death is shown best in what is perhaps Henry Fuseli’s most conventional history painting, known simply as Dido (1781). Dido has just been abandoned by Aeneas, has mounted her funeral pyre, and is on the couch on which she and Aeneas made love. She then falls on the sword Aeneas had given her, and that rests, covered with her blood, beside her, its tip pointing up towards her right breast. Her sister Anna rushes in to embrace her during her dying moments, and Jupiter sends Iris (shown above, wielding a golden sickle) to release Dido’s spirit from her body. Already smoke seems to be rising up from the pyre, confirming visually to Aeneas that she has killed herself, as he sails away from Carthage.

After a close call with the Sirens, Aeneas reaches the land of the Cercopes, who had been transformed into apes by Jupiter because of their treachery. The ship continues to the north-west along the coast of Italy, passing Naples.

This has been shown only by those like Antonio Tempesta who engraved for illustrated editions of the Metamorphoses. Tempesta’s Jupiter Changing the Cercopians into Monkeys from around 1600 shows Jupiter at the right, accompanied as ever by his huge eagle, with the transformed monkeys.

Once past Naples, Aeneas and his crew land at Cumae to visit the Sibyl there in her cave. He needs her assistance to go to the underworld to speak to the ghost of his father Anchises. The Sibyl reassures Aeneas that he will achieve his goals, and to that end she takes him to Proserpine’s sacred glade. Finding a golden bough there, she tells Aeneas to break that from the tree. The two of them travel to the underworld bearing that golden bough, make contact with the ghost of Anchises, and return safely.

During their walk back, Aeneas thanks the Sibyl for her help and guidance, and offers to build a temple to her, assuming she is a goddess. The Sibyl points out that she is no goddess, and explains how she had once been offered immortality if she were to let the god Apollo take her virginity. When Apollo had invited her to wish for anything, she had pointed to a pile of sand, and asked to live as many years as there were grains, but forgot to wish for eternal youth to accompany that.

Apollo offered her eternal youth as well, but she declined and remained a virgin. After seven hundred years, with another three hundred still to go, she is well into old age, infirm, and steadily vanishing as her body wastes away until only her voice will remain. With that, the pair reach Cumae, and Aeneas sets sail.

This is depicted in one of Claude Lorrain’s most wonderful coastal landscapes, his Coast View with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl from about 1645-49. Although their figures are small, Apollo on the left is holding his lyre in his left arm, trying to persuade the seated Sibyl, to the right, to let him take her virginity. Around them are the ruins of classical buildings and a stand of tall trees, as the land drops away to an idealised view of the coast of Italy. In the small bay immediately below them are some ships, which may be a forward reference to Aeneas’ future visit, although that would have been seven centuries later according to the Sibyl’s account.

JMW Turner didn’t tackle the first part of this story until 1823, when he painted The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl. His view appears to have been loosely based on Claude’s, but is set at Baiae, in the Bay of Naples. Apollo is again on the left, with his lyre, but the dark-haired Sibyl has adopted an odd kneeling position. She is holding some sand in the palm of her right hand, asking Apollo to grant her as many years of life as there are grains.

When Claude was painting his coastal view, François Perrier was painting a more conventional figurative account of Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl (c 1646). Aeneas, stood to the left of the incense burner, appears to be offering to burn incense in honour of the Sibyl, who stands at the right in front of her cave, and is just about to tell him her life-story. Behind Aeneas is a queue of people, including a king, bearing gifts and waiting to consult with the Sibyl. At the top left corner is a temple, and in the clouds above it the god Apollo, I believe.

JMW Turner’s first version of this later scene is thought to have been his first mythological painting, in about 1798. This second version, Lake Avernus: Aeneas and the Cumaean Sybil, dates from 1814 or 1815, and is both an improvement on the original and in better condition. True to the spirit of Claude’s landscape, this too is a mythological landscape showing the beautiful setting of Lake Avernus, near Pozzuoli, to the west of the city of Naples. In the distance are Baiae and the cliffs of Cape Miseno. The Sibyl, who doesn’t show her years, holds aloft a golden sprig rather than a bough, and Aeneas stands with his back to the viewer, as if he too is enjoying the view.

Turner’s last account is The Golden Bough, exhibited in 1834. It shows well how much his style had changed, although it retains compositional features from his earlier paintings. The Sibyl stands on the left, radiant in white light, and holding aloft a more substantial golden branch, with the golden sickle used to cut that branch, in her right hand. Down towards Lake Avernus are the Fates, dancing around a white glow. A couple of female companions of the Sibyl rest under the tree, but Aeneas is nowhere to be seen, although he might be in the middle of the Fates, perhaps. In the right foreground is a snake, a symbol of the underworld.