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Rinaldo and the Mirror-Shield

Creator

Italian Artist · 1605–1660

Francesco Maffei's fluid style combined the richness and splendor of the Baroque, the elegance and exaggeration of Mannerism, and his own flair for the visually dramatic. He probably trained in Vicenza with his father and with a local Mannerist painter. Active in Vicenza for most of his career, he also left intermittently to work in other Italian cities, including Venice, Rovido, and Brescia. Maff

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Date: about 1650–1655
Medium: Oil on copper
Culture: Italian
Department: Paintings
Institution: Getty Museum

In Torquato Tasso's 1581 epic poem *Gerusalemme liberata* (Jerusalem Delivered), the legendary medieval knight Rinaldo is bewitched by the beautiful sorceress Armida and lulled into a life of easy sensuality on the Fortunate Isles. His friends, the knights Carlo and Ubaldo, enter her garden and break her spell by showing Rinaldo a magic mirror-shield. His military spirit reawakened, Rinaldo later rejoins his companions in the enchanted forest.Some seventy years after the famous book was written, the Baroque artist Francesco Maffei applied his expressive brushwork and rich color to enhance the drama of Tasso's Renaissance epic.

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