Rinaldo and Armida

To become a full member of the Royal Academy of Painting in Paris, an artist had to hand over one painting, a reception piece, which stayed with the Academy for good. Boucher presented this one on 30 January 1734, when he was 30, and it was accepted as history painting, the highest category the Academy recognised. The story comes from Torquato Tasso's epic of the First Crusade, Jerusalem Delivered. The sorceress Armida has lured the crusader knight Rinaldo into her enchanted palace, and here he kneels beside her in his armour, the war forgotten, while a small cupid holds up a mirror for her. Behind them are a colonnade and a fountain. The Academy kept the painting on show in its great hall in the Louvre, and after the Revolution confiscated the Academy's collection in 1793 it passed to the state.