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Your galleryArmida Encounters the Sleeping Rinaldo
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Find the chariot wheel half hidden in the cloud, then compare Armida’s billowing orange and yellow with the sleeping knight propped on his hand.
This is the first of four scenes Tiepolo painted from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Jerusalem Delivered, published in 1581 and set during the First Crusade. The sorceress Armida finds the Christian knight Rinaldo asleep and decides to carry him off in her chariot, which rides on a cloud. The four canvases probably hung in a room of the Palazzo Corner, a Venetian palace that belonged to the powerful Cornaro family.
Oil on canvas · 187.5 × 216.8 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Armida Encounters the Sleeping Rinaldo
- Artist
- Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696–1770)
- Date
- c. 1742–45
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 187.5 × 216.8 cm (73 13/16 × 85 3/8 in.); Framed: 194.8 × 223.5 × 8.3 cm (76 1/2 × 88 × 3 1/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of James Deering
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.