Rinaldo and Armida,
oil on canvas, 143 x 227 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Bari;
where acquired by the present owner

The painting illustrates the story of the crusader Rinaldo and the sorceress Armida, characters from the epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso (XVI, 17–35). Armida abducted Rinaldo and carried him away to her magical garden.

In the present composition she holds a magic mirror while the knight reclines enthralled, gazing into her eyes. Meanwhile, Rinaldo’s two companions, Carlo and Ubaldo, appear on the right to persuade him to return to their quest to seize control of Jerusalem. The figures are set by a fountain on a wooded terrace overlooking a formal garden and the façade of Armida’s palace beyond. The colorful parrot in the upper right tree, also taken from Tasso’s poem, invites Rinaldo’s two companions to indulge in turn in the pleasures of this earthly paradise.

The artist of the present painting, active in the early seventeenth century, appears to have been inspired by the Roman works of Annibale Carracci (1560–1609), such his Rinaldo and Armida executed for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese in Rome in 1601, now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. The garden landscape in the background, relates to the fantastic landscapes by the Italo-Flemish painter Ludovico Pozzoserrato (circa 1550–1604/1605), and can be compared with the drawing View of the Gardens of a Palace in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. no. 2001.116) or the painting Banquet in the Park in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. GG2263).