The surgeon cannot extract an arrow from the thigh of Aeneas; Venus brings a medicinal herb to accomplish what the surgeon cannot. Oil painting after Virgil.

The painting shows an episode in Virgil's Aeneid (Aeneid XII 395-440): Aeneas has been wounded in the leg by an arrow: he breaks off the shaft but the healer Iapyx cannot remove the head Venus fetches the purple-flowered herb dittany from Mount Ida in Crete and gives it toIapyx who prepares it for medicinal use: with the aid of the herb, the arrowhead will come out of its own accord. In a similar episode in Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso (canto XI, especially stanza 74), the patient is Godfrey of Bouillon (Goffredo), the healer is the learned Paduan Erotimus, and an angel fetches the dittany instead of Venus