The Trojans Defend Their City; They Kill Androgeos (Aeneid, Book II) ca. 1530-35 Master of the Aeneid European of the Renaissance period viewed ancient Rome not only as the origin of Italian civilzation but also the geographic center of a lost golden age. This plaque belongs to a series of at least eighty Limoges enamels illustrating events from Virgils Aeneid. The Latin epic poem tells the story of the legendary hero Aeneas, who escaped the sack and burning of Troy by the Greeks and, after wandering for some time, settled in Italy, where his descendants founded Rome.The scene is not, howeverm the product of the enameler's imagination; rather, they are close copies of the woodcut illustrations for the edition of the Latin poets Opera printed by Johann Grüninger in Strasbourg in 1502. The same woodcuts were used again for the edition published in Lyon in 1517. The anonymous painter of the enamels may have used either the Strasbourg of the Lyon edition as his model, but the enamels are