Full title | Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield |
---|---|
Artist | Giovanni Battista Tiepolo |
Artist dates | 1696 - 1770 |
Series | Four Decorative Scenes |
Date made | about 1740-6 |
Medium and support | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 161.3 x 53.5 cm |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 1960 |
Inventory number | NG6303 |
Location | Room 39 |
Art route(s) | C |
Collection | Main Collection |
This painting shows Rinaldo, a Christian knight who has been enchanted by the Saracen sorceress Armida. He turns away from his own reflection in a magic shield that has been given to him by one of his companions to break the spell. Rinaldo will soon renounce his love for Armida and make his escape.
The scene is taken from an episode in Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, a sixteenth-century epic poem about the First Crusade, a Christian military campaign to recapture Jerusalem from Islamic rule. Rinaldo’s costume and armour are inspired by the Classical world: the scallop shell at his waist was, in antiquity, the attribute of Venus, the goddess of love.
Painted during the 1740s, at the height of Tiepolo’s career, this is one of four pictures in a series that once decorated a room in the Palazzo Cornaro on the Campo San Polo, Venice. The other paintings, also in the National Gallery’s collection, depict figures inspired by Tasso’s poem.
This painting shows Rinaldo, a Christian knight who has been enchanted by the Saracen sorceress Armida, turning away from his own reflection in a magic shield. With the spell broken, Rinaldo renounces his love for Armida and escapes with his companions, Carlo and Ubaldo, who stand nearby wearing elaborate helmets.
This scene is taken from an episode in Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, a sixteenth-century epic poem about the First Crusade, a Christian military campaign to recapture Jerusalem from Islamic rule. Rinaldo’s costume and armour is inspired by the Classical world: the scallop shell at his waist was in Antiquity the attribute of Venus, the goddess of love.
Painted during the 1740s, at the height of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s career, this is one of four pictures in a series that once decorated a room in the Palazzo Cornaro on the Campo San Polo, Venice. The other paintings – Seated Man, Woman with Jar, and Boy, Two Men in Oriental Costume and Two Orientals Seated under a Tree – also depict figures inspired by Tasso’s poem.
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Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield
Four Decorative Scenes
These four narrow canvases were painted during the 1740s by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo to decorate a room on the second floor of the Palazzo Cornaro on the Campo San Polo, Venice. Tiepolo was enjoying growing fame across Italy at this time; receiving prestigious commissions for monumental ceiling paintings and wall decorations.
The paintings formed part of a complex decorative scheme, with which a ceiling painting (now in Canberra) and four allegorical figures (now divided between New York and Amsterdam), have been associated. Tiepolo’s four paintings in the National Gallery – Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield, Seated Man, Woman with Jar and Boy, Two Men in Oriental Costume and Two Orientals seated under a Tree – are inspired by Torquato Tasso’s popular sixteenth-century poem Jerusalem Delivered. Set during the First Crusade, a Christian military campaign to recapture Jerusalem from Islamic rule, the poem tells of the ill-fated love between the Saracen sorceress Armida and Rinaldo, a Christian knight. Tiepolo’s pale pastel tones and lively brushwork in these scenes create a dazzling and exotic atmosphere.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is best known for his monumental ceiling paintings and wall decorations which transformed palaces and monasteries across Europe, from his native Venice to Germany and Spain. Painted at a time when Tiepolo’s fame was growing across Italy, these four narrow canvases once adorned a room on the second floor of the Palazzo Cornaro (or Corner) on the Campo San Polo, Venice.
The interior of the sixteenth-century Palazzo Cornaro was extensively redecorated between 1736 and 1747 in preparation for a marriage. Payments for work in the Sala degli Specchi (Room of Mirrors), on the second floor, are recorded in the 1740s. The room had an allegorical ceiling painting at its centre (now in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) and the walls were decorated with woodwork and mirrors. Four canvases with female allegorical figures, painted in monochrome and simulating bas-relief sculpture, hung above the doors (these are now thought to be the paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). In addition, there were four long rectangular canvases by Tiepolo (‘Quattro pezzi di quadro bislunghi’) which have been convincingly linked to the four narrow, upright paintings in the National Gallery. As indicated by an eighteenth-century inventory, the paintings drew inspiration from Torquato Tasso’s popular sixteenth-century poem Jerusalem Delivered. Set during the First Crusade (1096–9), a Christian military campaign to recapture Jerusalem from Islamic rule, the poem tells of the ill-fated love between the Saracen sorceress Armida and Rinaldo, a Christian knight.
The elaborate costumes and headgear worn by the figures in Tiepolo’s four paintings – Rinaldo turning in Shame from the Magic Shield, Seated Man, Woman with Jar and Boy, Two Men in Oriental Costume and Two Orientals seated under a Tree – reflect the eighteenth-century taste for the exotic. The pale pastel tones and Tiepolo’s lively brushwork in these paintings would have helped create a dazzling atmosphere in the room. The stories told in Tasso’s poem were especially popular in eighteenth-century Europe, where they often became the subject of operas, plays and concerts as well as art.




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