Monday, December 30, 2019

Steadfast Love of Tasso's Erminia for Tancred

Anonymous British Needleworker
Erminia carving the name of  Tancred into a Tree Trunk
ca. 1790
embroidery (silk thread)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Tommaso Minardi
Erminia carving Tancred's name on a Tree
ca. 1820
drawing
Philadelphia Museum of Art

from Gerusalemme Liberata

Oftentimes, when under the summer heat the sheep were lying stretch out in the shade, on the bark of a beech or laurel she inscribed the beloved name in a thousand ways, and carved on a thousand trees the bitter issue of her strange and hapless love; and then in reading over her own words she bathed her cheeks with lovely tears.

– Torquato Tasso (1581), translated from Italian verse to English prose by Ralph Nash (1987)

Agostino Carracci after Bernardo Castello
Erminia tending Tancred's wounds
1589-90
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

attributed to Paulus Willemsz van Vianen
Erminia succouring the wounded Tancred
before 1613
stipple-engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Alessandro Turchi
Erminia discovers the wounded Tancred
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Nicolas Poussin
Tancred and Erminia
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Nicolas Poussin
Tancred and Erminia
ca. 1634
oil on canvas
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham

Gerard van der Gucht after Nicolas Poussin
Tancred and Erminia
before 1776
engraving
Harvard Art Museums

Bernardo Cavallino
Erminia tending the wounded Tancred
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Pier Francesco Mola
Erminia tending the wounded Tancred
ca. 1650-60
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

from Gerusalemme Liberata

The unfortunate maiden had stopped to gaze upon the fierce warrior when by the sound of the grieving voice she took an arrow through the center of her heart. At the name of Tancred she quickly ran up like one drunken and out of her mind. When she saw the pale and handsome face, she did not descend, she hurled herself from the saddle

and poured out over him tears from an inexhaustible spring, and speech mingled with sobbing: 'Now in what wretched hour does Fortune bring me here? to what sad and bitter spectacle? After so long a time, with much ado, I find you, Tancred, and I see you again, and am not seen. I am not seen by you though I am with you; and finding you I am losing you forever.'

– Torquato Tasso (1581), translated from Italian verse to English prose by Ralph Nash (1987)

Giovanni Antonio Guardi
Erminia finding the wounded Tancred
ca. 1750-55
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Anonymous Fan-Painter after Giovanni Antonio Guardi
Erminia finding the wounded Tancred
1767
gouache on vellum, with ivory sticks
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jacques Firmin Beauvarlet after Louis Lagrenée the Elder
Tancred tended by Erminia
1761
etching and engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Francesco Bartolozzi after Giovanni Battista Cipriani
Tancred and Erminia
1784
etching and engraving
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

John Thompson
Erminia cutting off her hair to bind the wounds of Tancred
1817
wood-engraving (book illustration)
British Museum

from Gerusalemme Liberata

She sees that his trouble stems from exhaustion and from too great a loss of blood. But in such a solitary region she has nothing with which to bind his wounds, except a veil. Love invents for her the novel bandages and teaches her unaccustomed arts of mercy. She dried them with her hair and bound them again with the very hair that she had been wishing to cut;

inasmuch as her veil, scanty and thin, could not suffice for so many wounds. Dittany and crocus she had none, but charms she knew for such purposes powerful and magical. Already he shakes off the deadly stupor, already he is able to raises his eyes, luminous and expressive . . .

– Torquato Tasso (1581), translated from Italian verse to English prose by Ralph Nash (1987)