(Cento 1591–1666 Bologna)
Rinaldo and Armida,
oil on canvas, 113.5 x 153.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Commissioned in 1657 by Massimiliano III, Marchese di Soncino, but sold to another buyer;
Collection of Girolamo Manfrin, Venice, circa 1795-1897;
sale with Giulio Sambone, Milan, 1897;
Private European collection;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 21 April 2010, lot 74 (sold for € 1,042,300 );
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
C. C. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori bolognesi, vol. II, Bologna 1678, p. 380;
C. C. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori bolognesi, vol. II, revised edition, Bologna 1841, p. 270;
C. Laderchi, Descrizione della quadreria Costabili, Ferrara 1841, mentioned p. 24 (as Guercino);
Catalogo dei quadri esistenti nella Galleria Manfrin in Venezia, Venice 1856, no. 298 (as Guercino);
F. Zanotto, Nuovissima guida di Venezia delle isole della laguna, Venice 1856, p. 344 (as Guercino);
G. Nicoletti, Pinacoteca Manfrin a Venezia, Venice 1872, p. 23, no. 103 (as Guercino);
N. Turner, The Paintings of Guercino: A Revised and Expanded Catalogue raisonné, Rome 2017, p. 738, no. 455 (as Guercino)
L. Borean, La Galleria Manfrin a Venezia; L’ultima collezione d’arte della Serenissima, Udine 2018, p. 138 (as Guercino)

The present painting by Guercino depicts Rinaldo preventing Armida from committing suicide by as she attempts to thrust one of her arrows into her body. The lovers Rinaldo and Armida are the central characters in the Italian epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata, by Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), an idealised account of the first Crusade. Rinaldo is a Christian prince, while Armida a beautiful sorceress sent by Satan, in league with the Saracens, to undo the crusaders’ plans through witchcraft. The canvas is an important example of Guercino’s long and fruitful activity as a painter of secular stories, one that had started in 1615-17, with his fresco decorations of the Casa Pannini, a small country villa outside Cento. One of the rooms of the Casa Pannini showed the Stories of Rinaldo and Armida, with the penultimate scene representing Rinaldo Restraining Armida, the very same subject as the present picture (see P. Bagni, Guercino a Cento, Le decorazioni di Casa Pannini, Bologna 1984, p. 164, fig. 129; for a general discussion of the decoration of this room see p. 141 ff). This sequence of panels, now detached, are all now in the Pinacoteca Civica, Cento.

Nicholas Turner has recently suggested that this work should be identified as one of the five paintings commissioned by the Marchese di Soncino, four of which were recorded by Malvasia as ‘Fece al sig. Marchese Tonsini Milanese Quattro pezzi di quadri: Abraam quando scacciò Agar, Rinaldo, ed. Armida. Una B. V. Assunta, ed un Davide con la testa del Gigante’. Of these, only two are recorded as paid for (see Turner 2017, pp. 734-35, nos. 449-450). The payment problems are unlikely to have resulted from confusion in Guercino’s record-keeping, or a misreading on the part of Malvasia (as assumed by Mahon), but from the serious problems afflicting Massimiliano III, Marchese di Soncino for most of his life. In 1640, following a charge of double homicide (to which he added a third murder), he was condemned to death and his property was confiscated. However, in 1653 he was pardoned by King Philip IV of Spain and eventually retook possession of his castle near Milan. Though he re-established a certain civic status in the last years of his life, sitting on the Council of LX Decurioni of Milan, and, soon after in 1657, among the XII di Provvisione, before his death in 1659. Financial difficulties might explain why the Expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael (see op. cit. Turner, 2017, p. 737, no. 454) was diverted to a different patron and why the present work may never have been finished and may have been reduced (as seen in a preparatory study; see op. cit. Turner, 2017, p. 738, no. 455.a) to a half-length and sold to another buyer.

The current painting, Rinaldo Restraining Armida was conceived as a gallery picture and was intended as a feast for the eye. In contrast to the evenly lit surfaces and muted pastel shades of so many of Guercino’s late religious pictures, the drama of Armida’s attempted suicide is reinforced by the sombre background. By concealing the expression of Rinaldo’s eyes with the shadow cast by the peak of his helmet, the viewer is forced to contemplate Armida’s agonised face, her pallid figure thrown forward by the construction of the composition as well as by the surrounding darks. But a particularly welcome surprise in the new picture, is the extent of the bravura passages in certain details. For example, Guercino triumphs superbly over such pictorial challenges as Rinaldo’s shiny plumed helmet and Armida’s abandoned weaponry, including her quiver of arrows (though apparently no bow), her sword and armour, all of it piled up together into a trophy-of-arms, as it were, in the bottom right of the canvas.

As already mentioned, one of the rooms of the Casa Pannini, the Camera della Venere, was originally decorated with nine frescoes of the Stories of Rinaldo and Armida, now in the Pinacoteca Civica, Cento. In Guercino’s ex-Casa Pannini panel of Rinaldo Restraining Armida, the two protagonists appear full length in an open landscape, with Rinaldo neutralising Armida’s self-destructive act by approaching her from behind and holding her right forearm with his right hand. Her quiver of arrows and bow are cast to the ground at her feet. In this picture, however, Rinaldo stands to one side of Armida as he thwarts her bitter intentions. But in spite of these differences between the two treatments of the subject, which are separated by many years, there are some interesting similarities, especially in both the pose and lighting of Armida. In the early fresco, she also tilts her head a little coquettishly to the right and holds out her arms to the side as if taking wing. Even her dress is similar, with its high waistline, tied around with a sash. Also akin to the body of her much later counterpart is the fact that she, too, is lit from the left, so that the right side of her face and body fall in shadow.

Two of Guercino’s preparatory sketches for the present painting are known, one in the Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford (inv. no. 0578, 235 x 192 mm; see fig. 1), and the other in the Brera, Milan (see fig. 2). The Christ Church sketch, in pen and ink, was first connected by Denis Mahon, Massimo Pulini, and others with the school variant in the Palazzo Montecitorio, Rome (on deposit in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples), based on Guercino’s still lost painting (see J. Byam Shaw, Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, Oxford 1976, I, p. 261, repr. II, fig. 602; see also D. Mahon [ed.], Guercino, Poesia e Sentimento nella Pittura del ‘600, exhibition catalogue, Novara 2003, p. 236, no. 78.).

It is typical of Guercino’s fiery, rapidly drawn pen studies from his late period. Interestingly, the Christ Church drawing shows the figures almost full length, with the upper half of Armida’s body bare, implying that at first the patron may have wanted Guercino to paint him a whole-length canvas, but this request was perhaps then declined by the master on the grounds of ill-health. As in the painted result, Rinaldo stands next to Armida, in the same plane, almost as if in a dance, and he restrains Armida’s impetuous attempt to harm herself, and, significantly, he does so with both arms, as in the painting. Naturally, the halting of her action is a climax in the poem, for ‘già la fera punta al petto stende’.

In the Brera drawing, Rinaldo holds Armida’s forearm with only one hand, with his forearm beneath rather than above that of Armida, while Armida crooks her left arm by resting it on her waist, rather than gesturing back with her left hand to the weaponry behind her.

The present painting shows the ethos of Guercino’s conception of the subject, as explored in both drawings: the different emotional tenor of each figure; the ambiguity of intent of each one in their physical entanglement and their forward movement together out of the space towards the spectator, like a couple in some dance. These subtleties are beautifully brought to fruition in the present picture. Furthermore, more of the essential details from the two drawings live on, or are further developed, in the present picture suggesting the continuity of the creative process as the artist shifted from one medium to the other.

We are grateful to Nicholas Turner for his help in cataloguing the present painting.