ENEA E LANCILLOTTO

Speranza

In the Lancelot of the Old French Vulgate Cycle and the Prosa-Lancelot of the Middle High German Lancelot-Gral-Zyklus, LANCELOT stands in a typological connection with Virgil's Aeneas (and with Christ).

Aeneas, founder of Rome, foreshadows Lancelot, protector of King Arthur's realm

(And Lancelot foreshadows Christ, the Saviour.)

Aeneas's descent into Hades compares with Lancelot's journey into the Dolorous Garde.

(And that in turn to Christ's descent into hell illustrates this point.)

Comparing the portrait of Lancelot to a period portrait of Christ and to a description of Aeneas's lion skin further strengthens this contention.

Good characters normally are described as having white skin and evil characters with black skin, but extremely rarely do characters have brown skin.

The colour of Aeneas's lion skin is light brown to reddish, Lancelot's skin is a little more intense than the colour of the lion skin with an admixture of black in the German, while the skin of Christ is light brown mixed with red and deepened with black, darker still and more intense than the lion skin of Aeneas and the brown skin of Lancelot.

The lion as a symbol of Christ and the unusual brown skin link the triad Aeneas-Lancelot-Christ typologically.