Rinaldo abandoning Armida

This drawing is part of a series of studies with episodes from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata. The epic love story of Rinaldo and Armida (XVI, 22-60) was treated in a fresco decoration by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the Villa Valmarana, near Vicenza, and later translated into a series of etchings by his son Domenico. Six other similar sheets depicting Rinaldo and Armida by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo were in an album of drawings, once owned by Horace Walpole and disbound in 1965 (Christie’s, London, 15 June 1965, lots 124-129).