This silver-gilt dish with two handles is a rare and sophisticated example of a presentation dish. The central scene is taken from the epic poem, the Aeneid, by the Roman poet Virgil. It shows the central character, Aeneas, fleeing the burning city of Troy, carrying his father Anchises and accompanied by his son Ascanius. The poem was extremely popular and was published throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, often with illustrations. These provided a source for the figural compositions used by painters, architects, goldsmiths, sculptors and ceramic painters in their own works. Often they copied an entire scene, but sometimes just certain figures were selected. In this case, Gabriel Felling has made an almost-identical copy of Johann Wilhelm Baur's 1641 etching of Aeneas fleeing Troy. Baur (c. 1607-1642) was a German painter and engraver who worked in Italy and Austria.
Aeneas's flight from Troy with his family was a scene of great symbolic meaning with a long literary and artistic tradition. To classical scholars, it represented the origins of Rome, since Aeneas was believed to be the founder of Rome. It also signified the themes of exile, of the Three Ages of Man and of filial love. The scene was chosen by Andrea Alciati to depict filial love in his Emblematum liber ('Book of Emblems'), published in Augsburg in 1531. Alciati, a lawyer with a fine classical education, was the inventor of the emblem book, in which moral lessons were conveyed through a combination of word and image. In this case, the emblem of filial love was especially suitable for a commemorative gift from a grandfather to a grandson.