Erminia and the Shepherd (from a set of Scenes from Gerusalemme Liberata)
Designed by Domenico Paradisi Italian
Woven at the San Michele
Workshop director Pietro Ferloni Italian
Not on view
Commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, a great-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII, this was part of a massive series, heroic in scale as well as narrative, of fifteen tapestries depicting the romanticized version of the Christians’ First Crusade into Jerusalem recounted in Tasso’s sixteenth-century epic poem, Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered).
In a gentle illusionistic interplay of spatial projection and recession, double-headed eagles (alluding to the Ottoboni arms), settle on the imposing sculptural surround to a landscape scene in which the Turkish princess, Erminia, fleeing from Christian soldiers, seeks shelter with a shepherd and his family.
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