Roman school, 17th century, Angelica and Medoro

Roman school, 17th century

Angelica and Medoro they carve their names into the bark of a tree

Oil on canvas, 65 x 48,5 cm 

“Among many pleasures, wherever a straight tree / You saw a fountain or a pure stream shadowing, / There was a pin or a knife immediately thickened; /So, if there was any stone less hard:/ And it was written outside in a thousand places,/And so in the house in as many on the wall, /Angelica and Medoro, in various ways /Tied together with different knots”.

(Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XIX, 36)

The canvas depicts one of the most famous episodes of Orlando furioso, a chivalric poem by Ludovico Ariosto, published in Ferrara in 1519 and a source of inspiration for many artists of the following centuries. The protagonist of canto XIX is the beautiful Angelica, princess of Cathay, with whom many Christian paladins fell in love, including the valiant Orlando, who during the course of the poem also goes mad, not seeing his feelings reciprocated. Yet, the charming girl rejects all her suitors, until, struck by Love's arrows, she falls in love with Medoro, a simple Muslim infantryman. In fact, Angelica, having moved away from the battlefields, finds him wounded in the woods and stops to treat him; the more her physical wound heals, the more the wound in her heart grows. Therefore Angelica decides to marry the Saracen in great secrecy in the forest and, overwhelmed by the passion of love, the two engrave their names everywhere, before finally leaving for India. It is precisely this universal declaration of love that the 1560th century painter intended to depict. At the edge of the forest, Angelica is busy carving the bark of a tree, while next to her, softly lying down, is Medoro, who is absorbed in observing the gesture of her companion. They wear simple clothes, suitable for the bucolic atmosphere in which their love story takes place, far from the bloody war settings narrated in the previous songs by the poet from Ferrara. The painter must have been active in the Roman area in the 1609th century. In his rendering of nature he seems to look to the ways of Annibale Carracci (Bologna, XNUMX – Rome, XNUMX) and his circle; the graceful poses of the characters, which seem reminiscent of ancient sculptures, and the delicate rendering of the clothes, whose colors based on red and white tones, stand out in a landscape otherwise dominated by the soft evening light, can be traced back to the classicism of the time.

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