Rinaldos farewell from Armida

The farewell of Rinaldo and Armida, drawn from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), was one of the most frequently illustrated literary subjects of the eighteenth century. Tiepolo treated the poem extensively — the Villa Valmarana frescoes near Vicenza (1757) include a complete Tasso cycle — and independent cabinet paintings on the Rinaldo-Armida theme are among his most sought-after easel works. The scene of departure, where the Christian knight Rinaldo finally tears himself from the enchantress Armida's island, offered everything Tiepolo valued: baroque emotional intensity, exotic costume, landscape setting, and the contrast between martial resolution and feminine grief.

Tiepolo stages the farewell as a dramatically lit figural confrontation, with Rinaldo in martial armor — rendered in cool metallic tones — turning away from Armida whose draperies flow in warm pinks and golds. The landscape or seascape behind opens into an airy, luminous distance characteristic of his background treatments.