Clorinda Rescuing Sofronia and Olindo

Clorinda Rescuing Sofronia and Olindo, dated 1660 and in the J. Paul Getty Museum, depicts an episode from Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1581) — the epic of the First Crusade — in which the pagan warrior Clorinda intercedes to prevent the Christian martyrs Sofronia and Olindo from being burned at the stake. Tasso's poem was enormously popular with Baroque painters and patrons, providing pseudo-historical subjects from the Crusading period that allowed exploration of heroism, love, sacrifice, and the relationship between Christian and non-Christian values. Clorinda herself — a female warrior of exceptional ability, eventually baptized before her own death — was one of the period's most compelling literary figures. The Getty's acquisition of this canvas as part of its European paintings collection placed it in one of the most prominent contexts for Italian Baroque painting in North America.

The rescue composition organizes around the contrast between the figures being saved — bound, surrounded by fire — and the figure effecting the rescue, free and authoritative. Clorinda's horse, if present, creates vertical height that contrasts with the compressed horizontal of the condemned pair. Fire — difficult to render convincingly in oil — is indicated through warm light from below that illuminates the rescue from an unusual direction, giving the scene its characteristic Baroque urgency.