(Lucca or Rome 1654–1727 Rome)
Rinaldo and Armida in the enchanted garden,
oil on canvas, 190 x 260 cm, framed

Provenance:
European Private Collection

We are grateful to Giancarlo Sestieri for confirming the attribution and for his assistance in cataloguing the present painting.

Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari was a pupil of Carlo Maratti and adapted his style of painting to the 1720s with a softer, more elegant version of his classicism. According to Pascoli, Chiari was apprenticed to the painter and art dealer Carlantonio Galliani at the age of ten before he joined Maratti’s studio in Rome, in 1666 (see L. Pascoli, Vite (1730–36), II, pp. 209–17). His first official commission was for paintings on the side walls of the chapel of the Marcaccioni in Santa Maria del Suffragio in Rome (Birth of the Virgin; Adoration of the Magi), entrusted to him on the death of Niccolò Berrettoni (1637–82), who had originally been commissioned to execute them. This project established his reputation, and thereafter he won the patronage of many noble Roman families and of foreign visitors to Rome. In the early years of the 18th century, Pope Clement XI became Chiari’s most important patron. Papal commissions included the vast ceiling picture in the nave of San Clemente, painted on canvas and depicting the Glory of St Clement (circa 1715), as well as one of the twelve oval paintings of Old Testament Prophets, commissioned in 1718,for the nave of San Giovanni in Laterano. Chiari was Principe of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome from 1722 to 1725.

The scene depicted in the present work refers to an episode drawn from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem delivered, XVI, 17-23) and has Rinaldo and Armida as the protagonists: The great Christian prince is carried away in vengeance by the young and beautiful witch sent by Satan, who supports the Saracens. However, after taking him to the Isola Felice, they fall in love.

Chiari offers a variant on the usual portrayal of the scene, which, following Tasso’s account, sees the hero holding a mirror in front of Armida to enable the couple to contemplate their faces marked by the ecstasy of love. In this work instead, we see the witch sitting on the ground, adorning her hair with threads of pearls brought to her on a tray by a putto, while Rinaldo lies before her, still wearing his warrior’s garb, and offers her a jewel.

In the right foreground, two putti hold a quiver containing arrows, symbolising the blind love that has swept over the two young people. Amongst the foliage of the woods in the background, we see the two knights who have set out to find Rinaldo, instead discovering the two lovers in close embrace on the shores of a lake. In the background on the opposite side, one can make out Armida’s palace. This idyll is very shortly to be rudely interrupted: brought back to earth by his two companions, Rinaldo will abandon Armida who, after begging him to stay, will exchange pleas for curses.

Narrated by Torquato Tasso as an adaptation of the story by Virgil concerning Aeneas and Dido, this episode was a popular subject during the enthusiasm for “arcadia” in the late 17th and early 18th centuries This was particularly prevalent in Rome, where Christina, Queen of Sweden, had revived the cult for this artistic trend, aspiring to a return to the simplicity of nature and uncontaminated humanity, and which in 1690 led to the founding of the Academy of Arcadia in pursuit of these goals.

The episode of Rinaldo and Armida in love on an unspoiled island offered a perfect subject for creating idealised escapes from reality on canvas. These were highly appreciated by the most refined collectors of the time, including uninhibited prelates like Cardinals Ottoboni and Spada. The Galleria Spada in Rome conserves the four mythological themes, adapted from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, that were commissioned in 1708 by Cardinal Fabrizio Spada Varalli (1642–1717); they are emblematic examples of the poetic and artistic trends of the time, and which found an exemplary interpreter in Chiari.