LITERATURE -

R. Lattuada, ‘Due nuove opere per gli esordi di Salvator Rosa’, in Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Fabrizio Lemme, ed. F. Baldessari and A. Agresti, 2017, pp. 149-57, illustrated.

The protagonist is identified as Erminia by her long blonde hair and the yellow dress which she wears under the armour; her horse also has a rather feminine blue drape as a backstrap. 

The subject is from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto VII, verses I-II. Erminia, daughter of the Emir of Antioch, is secretly in love with the Christian Tancred, by whom she has been imprisoned and then freed. One night she steals the armour of Clorinda, the object of Tancred's affections, and leaves Jerusalem in this disguise to try to find him. She is, however, ambushed outside the walls of the city by Christian knights, who mistake her for her rival. She flees, riding through the night until she comes across a family of shepherds, who look after her.

I.

Through the brown shade of forests ivied o’er

With age, meanwhile divine Erminia fled;

Her trembling hand the bridle ruled no more,

And she appeared betwixt alive and dead.

The steed that bore her with the’ instinctive dread

Of danger at its own wild mercy, through

Such winding paths and bosky mazes sped,

That it at length quite rapt her from the view,

Baffling the eager hopes of those that would pursue.

II.

As when, after a long and toilsome chase,

The hounds return, a tired and panting train,

Leaving the hare it mocks their skill to trace,

Lodged in some thicket from the open plain;

So, flushed with shame, resentment, and disdain, 

Their far pursuit the weary knights resigned;

Yet still the timid Virgin fled amain

Through the drear woods, disconsolate of mind,

Nor once looked back to mark if yet they pressed behind.[i]

Professor Riccardo Lattuada dates the painting to the first half of the 1630s, very early in Rosa's career, when his work is stylistically very closely related to that of Micco Spadaro. He finds the composition and the treatment of the trees characteristic of the painter, and feels that the extremely rare (possibly unique) subject "implicitly proves the attribution to Rosa". The attribution has also been confirmed by Professor Nicola Spinosa.

[i] Intanto Erminia infra l’ombrose piante

d’antica selva dal cavallo è scòrta,

né piú governa il fren la man tremante

e mezza quasi par tra viva e morta.

Per tante strade si raggira e tante

il corridor ch'in sua balia la porta,

ch'al fin da gli occhi altrui pur si dilegua,

ed è soverchio omai ch'altri la segua.

Qual dopo lunga e faticosa caccia

tornansi mesti ed anelanti i cani 

che la fèra perduta abbian di traccia,

nascosa in selva da gli aperti piani,

tal pieni d'ira e di vergogna in faccia

riedono stanchi i cavalier cristiani.

Ella pur fugge, e timida e smarrita

non si volge a mirar s'anco è seguita.