Rinaldo and Armida

The story of Rinaldo and Armida, drawn from Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), became one of the most popular subjects in European Baroque and Rococo painting precisely because it joined martial and erotic themes in a fantasy landscape. Armida, a Saracen sorceress, lures the crusader hero Rinaldo into an enchanted garden of pleasure, suspending his martial duty in the arms of love. The subject offered painters the rare opportunity to depict both male heroic beauty and female seductive power within a lush, explicitly pleasurable setting. De La Fosse's undated version, in the National Trust collection, likely dates to his mature period when his fluent brushwork and warm colorism were best suited to the subject's sensuous demands. The pair of canvases at the National Trust — this and The Rape of Europa — suggests they may have been acquired together as decorative pendant works for a British country house.

The garden setting gives de La Fosse scope for his atmospheric landscape handling alongside the figural group. Warm, golden light suffuses the scene, supporting the mood of enchanted suspension. Figures are posed with elegant artifice appropriate to the literary fantasy subject, and draperies flow with practiced decorative freedom.