"Dido Aflame" by Candice Raquel Lee

Dido Aflame (edition of 4 in cast-stone)
Size (in): 9L x 7W x 17"H with rotating black wooden base. $500 CAD including shipping (Also available in limited-edition bronze by request).

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The Sculpture: My sculpture represents the mythic queen of Carthage, Dido, aflame with passion and rage. Thus, she is contorted and shaped like a flame. She is bent inwardly just as she holds her emotions within and turns them against herself. As she was passionately enamoured with Aeneas, so too her fiery temperament drove her to kill herself, appropriately enough, by fire.

My Dido grips her ankles tightly and howls her anguish. Her black patina is designed to emulate the look of charred ash with copper highlights--her hair, inside her mouth--that represent the continued smouldering of her emotions.

Dido Aflame is available as well upon request in bronze.

The Story: Dido is the famed queen of Carthage from Virgil's ancient epic poem The Aeneid. Having escaped from Troy as it was being destroyed by the Greeks, the hero Aeneas finds himself in Dido's city where the queen falls passionately in love with him. In this lovesick condition, a "flame burned/…in her marrow…/Unhappy Dido aflame wandered over the city/In anguish, as when a deer has been struck by an arrow."

When the gods compel Aeneas to leave Dido on the sly, and she discovers the betrayal, Virgil writes that she became "all aflame / With rage." Appropriately enough she has a flaming pyre prepared to burn her body and commits suicide.*

This story shows that those who harbour uncontrollable emotions, particularly anger, hatred, and rage, ultimately end up destroying themselves.

*It seems to me, however, that what really happened was that Aeneas killed Dido when she refused to surrender to his attempt at usurping her rule. As a queen without a husband she must have been vulnerable to such an attempt, even through a means more insidious than the use of direct force. He then had to flee the city. Her rage is thus that of someone who provides kindness and love only to face an even worse betrayal than mere abandonment.

E-mail: candice@candiceraquel.com | Phone: 519.853.9037