Rinaldo und Armina

Rinaldo and Armida, painted around 1721 and passing through the Munich Central Collecting Point, is Tiepolo's earliest known treatment of the subject from Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1581) that he would revisit throughout his career. Tasso's poem — the Christian crusade to liberate Jerusalem, complicated by the Muslim enchantress Armida's seduction of the Christian hero Rinaldo — had been a source for Venetian painters since Annibale Carracci's 1601 series for the Palazzo Farnese, and before that for Domenichino and Guercino. In Venice, the Tasso subjects carried particular resonance as allegories of the Republic's own complicated relationship with the Ottoman world: Catholic heroism, Eastern temptation, and eventual resolution. This early 1721 version shows the young Tiepolo beginning his engagement with the subject on the same scale — 69 × 134 cm — as his companion mythological painting, suggesting they were conceived together for the same patron. The later Würzburg and Villa Valmarana treatments of the same subject show how radically his handling of the theme would develop over his career.

Oil on canvas, the work demonstrates Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's airy compositions and dramatic foreshortening. The composition is carefully structured to balance visual elements, while the handling of light and color creates atmospheric coherence across the picture surface.