Landscape with Erminia
Artist: Agostino Tassi (Italian, 1580–1644)
Original Dimensions: 12 7/8" x 18"
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
About Artwork: (ca. 1630) "This small and delicate painting is of particular importance for our understanding of the transformations in landscape painting in early seventeenth-century Rome—a period in which a renewed attention to the study of nature and an interest in the light effects of various times of day intersected with the Venetian tradition of idealized, pastoral landscape. Tassi depicts an episode from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), first published in 1581. The pagan warrior Erminia, in love with the Christian Tancred, writes his name on a tree in the forest as a sign of her love for him. In 1612, Tassi was convicted of raping the artist Artemisia Gentileschi." - (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

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