Armida Encounters the Sleeping Rinaldo

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Artist: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696–1770)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 187.5 × 216.8 cm (73 13/16 × 85 3/8 in.); Framed: 194.8 × 223.5 × 8.3 cm (76 1/2 × 88 × 3 1/4 in.)
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

This painting likely once graced a large hall at the Palazzo Corner in Venice along with several others. The suite illustrates the ill-fated love of Armida and Rinaldo from Torquato Tasso’s 1581 epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). The story takes place during the First Crusade, an eleventh-century military expedition in which Christian knights attempted to seize control of Jerusalem and check the power of the Muslims who ruled the city. In this scene, the beautiful sorceress Armida encounters the knight Rinaldo as he sleeps and decides to carry him away on her cloud-borne chariot. When Rinaldo wakes, he immediately falls for Armida and forgets his quest in Jerusalem.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted a vast, open expanse of sky and scenery and elaborately arranged the figures, draperies, clouds, and trees to animate the composition. Although Tasso’s story symbolizes the conflict between love and duty, Tiepolo’s depiction of a magical world—enhanced by effervescent colors and dense, creamy paint—seems to evoke only love’s enchantment.

Tiepolo’s paintings combine virtuosic draftsmanship with seemingly spontaneous execution, a formula perfectly suited to the large-scale works that he created to decorate palaces and churches throughout Italy, Germany, and Spain.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0.