Virgil's 'lugentes campi' (Aen. 6.439) in two sonnets by Luigi Tansillo and Berardino Rota

This paper studies the two poets Italian sonnets composed about Queen Dido and painter Irene Spelimbergo. Luigi Tansilo devoted his to the Queen of Carthage, who stands at the "lugentes campi" very promptly following an episode of Virgil's Aeneid (the editors did not realize that debt and believed the Italian poet meant a lady wanted dead return to die out of jealousy). Berardino Rota devoted his sonnet to the painter Irene, who imagines the Champs Elysees and descending from them to the earth (made into an arch Iris because as a painter also planting colorful sky) to bring a message of peace. In his sonnet, Rota also refers to his dead wife (in the same year as Irene), of whom he says, to prove his love, to be sweeping the "lugentes campi" (he uses the singular).