Tancred Frees Herminia, from The Story of Tancred and Clorinda

In a scene of early modern European fantasy, a Muslim princess, Herminia, recollects the magnanimity shown her by Christian conqueror, Tancred, in the setting of the ruined and ravished city of Antioch (in modern-day Turkey). The sixteenth-century epic poem inspiring it, La Gerusalemme Liberata written by Torquato Tasso, ostensibly recounted the eleventh-century religious wars– known as “The First Crusade”– initiated by the Latin Church to [re]claim the Holy Land from Islamic rule. However, factually wildly inaccurate, the story was primarily a sensational romance, and thinly veiled propaganda against the rapidly expanding Ottoman empire. Recognizing a burgeoning market for such subject matter, the tapestry was expertly woven by Flemish weavers, themselves refugees from the Protestant-Catholic religious wars, in a small but wildly successful commercial workshop in Paris.