The Abduction of Rinaldo

The prototype for this is a lost work painted c. 1637 by Poussin for his friend and colleague, Jacques Stella, for which preparatory drawings exist in the Louvre and the Royal Collection, Windsor. The original is known through the engraving by Guillaume Chasteau, dedicated to Charles Le Brun, as well as through later copies, notably that in Berlin (Staatliche Museen, no. 486).

The subject is taken from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (1575), which portrays the capture of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. Armida, a virgin witch on the side of the Saracens, abducts Rinaldo, a Christian prince, with whom she has fallen in love having cast him into a magical sleep.