3-035-521 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Rinaldo and the Mirror-Shield, about 1650-1655. In Torquato Tasso's 1581 epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), the legendary medieval knight Rinaldo is bewitched by the beautiful sorceress Armida and lulled into a life of easy sensuality on the Fortunate Isles. His friends, the knights Carlo and Ubaldo, enter her garden and break her spell by showing Rinaldo a magic mirror-shield. His military spirit reawakened, Rinaldo later rejoins his companions in the enchanted forest.Some seventy years after the famous book was written, the Baroque artist Francesco Maffei applied his expressive brushwork and rich colour to enhance the drama of Tasso's Renaissance epic.