Erminia and the Shepherds

Painted in 1776 and held by the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK), Erminia and the Shepherds illustrates an episode from Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581), one of the most influential literary works of the Counter-Reformation. Erminia, a Saracen princess in love with the Christian knight Tancredi, flees the Crusader camp disguised as a warrior and finds shelter among simple Palestinian shepherds. Tasso's poem provided European painters with a rich inventory of romantic and pastoral subjects throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Joseph-Benoît Suvée, born in Bruges and trained in Paris, brought the Flemish sensibility for landscape and figure together with French Neoclassical formal discipline in this interpretation. The MSK Ghent holds an important body of Suvée's work, making this painting central to any assessment of his career. The pastoral subject allowed Suvée to explore the contrast between military violence and rural tranquility.

Suvée places the elegantly dressed Erminia against a pastoral landscape populated by shepherds and their flocks. The contrast between her warrior costume and the peaceful agricultural setting is central to the composition. He uses a warm outdoor light to unify the figures and landscape in a naturalistic setting.