Angelica and Medoro
by BLANCHARD, Jacques, Oil on canvas, 122 x 176 cm
The canvas illustrates a passage from Ludovico Ariosto’s (1474–1533) epic poem Orlando Furioso (XIX:36), in which the two lovers engrave their names in the bark of a tree. Because the surface is worn, the letters are no longer visible. In the early 1630s Blanchard was decorating the galleries of various private houses in Paris with such narrative pictures in series. The soft lighting and languid nudity suggest the influence of sixteenth-century Venetian painting.