Landscape with Erminia and the Shepherds

Pietro Paolo Bonzi c.1576 - 1636

Summary

Bonzi has taken as his subject the celebrated Renaissance epic Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), based on the historic events of the First Crusade (1096-1099). The poem was published in 20 cantos in 1581; the present scene is intended to represent part of the action of cantos 6:56-7:17. Erminia is the intelligent and beautiful daughter of the Emperor of Antioch. When the city falls to the Christian crusader, Prince Tancredi, her life is spared and her royal status recognised by the gallant invader. Erminia falls deeply in love with Tancredi. Knowing that he is always at the heart of the fighting, in perpetual mortal danger, and that her skills at healing could potentially save his life, she conceals her identity by dressing up in the armour of her warrior companion, Clorinda, in order to gain access to him on the battlefield. Her plan backfires when she is pursued by enemy soldiers. Taking refuge in a wood, she meets an old shepherd who extols to her the virtues of pastoral life. Erminia and the shepherd are shown beside a great, gnarled tree. She draws our attention to this exquisitely painted specimen and to the idyllic pastoral scene beyond, pointing out the landscape as the principal subject matter. An elegant stand of repoussoir trees in the middle distance, delicately brushed in, directs our gaze toward cattle and sheep grazing on open plains in the background. The distant hills are illuminated by a bright, clouded sky. Bonzi (il Gobbo dei Carracci), worked on a number of major decorative commissions in Rome. In his landscapes he evolved naturalistic effects of light and atmosphere, influenced by the work of Agostino Tassi and Claude Lorrain, but also by that of Adam Elsheimer, Paul Bril and other northern landscape painters active in Rome around that time. As in Claude's paintings, the figures are merely accessory to the principal subject, which is the landscape, despite the complex narrative with which they are associated.

Display Label

Landscape with Erminia and the Shepherds 1620 Pietro Paulo Bonzi c1576 - 1636 Oil on panel Erminia is a Syrian refugee, who flees the scene of her heartbreak to hide in a wood, where a family of shepherds care for her. She is a character from Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), by Torquato Tasso. Published in 1581, this Italian epic poem tells a highly romanticised tale of a Christian crusade to capture Jerusalem from Muslim forces. While the figures provide a ‘subject’ for the work, they only play a minor part in this landscape composition. The feathery leaves against the sky and the pale receding hills are beautiful natural touches: this painting is a fine example of the best landscape painting in Italy before Claude Lorrain began to develop the genre in the 1640s. Bonzi included a decaying tree in his paintings so often that the contrasting living and dead branches became almost his hallmark. 1979.71