Armida Encounters the Sleeping Rinaldo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo · c. 1742–45

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

187.5 × 216.8 cm (73 13/16 × 85 3/8 in.); Framed: 194.8 × 223.5 × 8.3 cm (76 1/2 × 88 × 3 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

Tiepolo's depiction of the sorceress Armida hovering over the sleeping crusader Rinaldo is one of the eighteenth century's most breathtaking treatments of suspended drama — a moment caught between violence and enchantment. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was the undisputed master of Venetian Rococo painting, celebrated across Europe for commissions that ranged from Venetian palaces to the grand staircase of the Würzburg Residenz. In this canvas, painted around 1742–45, his handling of light is characteristically airborne — silks catch the glow, clouds billow with almost physical weight, and Armida's expression shifts from intent to wonder in a single glance. The scene draws from Torquato Tasso's epic poem *Jerusalem Delivered*, in which the enchantress descends to kill Rinaldo but is undone by his beauty, a pivot that sets the entire romance in motion. Tiepolo returned to the Rinaldo and Armida story several times throughout his career, suggesting a particular fascination with its mix of power, vulnerability, and desire — themes that clearly resonated beyond the literary source. This hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas captures the luminosity and theatrical scale that make the original at the Art Institute of Chicago so arresting, rendered stroke for stroke by a skilled artist working in the same tradition.