Rinaldo and Armida in Her Garden

In the enchanted garden of the sorceress Armida, the crusader Rinaldo sits enthralled at her feet, his sword and shield cast aside, while she gazes into a magic mirror and his companions Carlo and Ubaldo appear at the gate to recall him to the quest for Jerusalem. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted the canvas about 1742–45 as the second of the four large pictures in his sequence from Tasso’s epic Gerusalemme liberata, and it shows the Venetian master at the height of his decorative brilliance: the silvery light, the pale rose and gold of the draperies, the fountains and peacocks of the garden all woven into a scene of seduction suspended in time. The four canvases were among the great Tiepolos acquired by James Deering, and this one came to the Art Institute in 1925 as his bequest. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.