Angélica y el ermitaño

The story comes from Orlando Furioso, the great chivalric poem Ariosto published earlier that century and that everyone with an education then knew. In canto eight an old hermit, supposedly holy, uses magic to strand the beautiful Angelica on a deserted shore, sends her into a deep sleep, and then leans over the sleeping woman. Rubens gives the old man's greed a face while Angelica lies unaware. He had studied a version of this same scene by Tintoretto during his years in Venice around 1600, and you can feel that Venetian warmth in her skin and in the heavy dark landscape. It hangs in Vienna now, in the old imperial collection that became the Kunsthistorisches Museum.