La Destruction du palais d'Armide

Charles-Antoine Coypel loved the theatre almost as much as painting, and this scene comes straight off the stage, the last act of Lully's opera Armide, first sung for the French court in 1686, and behind that the crusader epic of the Italian poet Tasso. The sorceress Armida has failed to make the knight Renaud love her. In her fury she brings down her own enchanted palace, riding a dragon while summoned demons tear at the columns. Coypel painted it in 1737 not as a stand-alone picture but as a full-size model for a woven tapestry, one of a set drawn from famous opera scenes. He keeps it theatrical on purpose, the figures flung into operatic poses while smoke and falling stone fill the air around Armida's dragon.