Rinaldo and Armida

Torquato Tasso's crusade epic, Jerusalem Delivered, first printed in 1581, gave Italian painters a new store of subjects, and Tiarini took this one from its 14th canto. Armida, a sorceress sent to lure the crusaders away from the war, has put the knight Rinaldo to sleep and is carrying him off in her enchanted chariot. In the poem she binds him with chains of roses and lilies, and a garland of flowers runs across his body here. A servant in the corner holds his helmet with its eagle crest. The mirror at the edge of the canvas, the museum suggests, points to how the spell will break, with Rinaldo seeing his own reflection. Tiarini painted it in the early 1620s. A Roman guidebook of 1650 already named him, an inventory of 1790 gave the picture to Pietro da Cortona, and his name was only restored in 1893.