Clorinda Rescues Olindo and Sophronia

Unknown artist · 1600s

Medium

Brush and brown wash, heightened with lead white (partially oxidized) and pink gouache, over black chalk, on blue laid paper, laid down on ivory laid paper

Original size

26.2 × 20.5 cm (10 3/8 × 8 1/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

This dramatic drawing captures one of the most celebrated acts of mercy in Italian Renaissance literature — the warrior Clorinda halting the execution of two innocent Christians, a scene drawn directly from Torquato Tasso's beloved epic *Jerusalem Delivered*. Though the artist remains unidentified, the work shows a confident hand steeped in the Baroque tradition of narrative illustration. The layered technique — black chalk underdrawing built up with brown wash, then lifted with lead white and pink gouache on a cool blue paper ground — creates a luminous tension between shadow and light that few drawings of the period achieve. The partially oxidized white lends the figures an almost spectral glow, as though the moment is already passing into myth. Tasso's poem, published in 1581, was one of the most widely read works in seventeenth-century Europe, and scenes from it were reproduced across every medium by artists seeking to capture its emotional range. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the delicate tonal interplay of the original onto canvas, preserving the drama of the composition while giving the scene the warmth and permanence of paint — a fitting tribute to a work that has endured four centuries without ever losing its sense of urgency.