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Orlando Furioso: Introduction
Until around 150 years ago, one of the most widely read books in Europe was an epic poem by the Italian Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso – literally translated as Raging Roland/Orlando. If you enjoy...
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Orlando Furioso: Lovers and hippogriffs
Ariosto continues the story of Orlando Furioso from the end of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando in Love, but it stands alone. In that earlier epic, Angelica, beautiful daughter of the king of Cathay,...
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Orlando Furioso: Sorcery and Scotland
At the end of the second canto of Ariosto’s Orland Furioso, Pinabello and Bradamante have left in their quest for Ruggiero, the knight who loves the latter, who has been taken prisoner in a remote...
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Orlando Furioso: More deception and the talking myrtle
At the end of the fourth canto, Rinaldo was in Scotland, travelling through a wood with an esquire on a knightly adventure to rescue the King of Scotland’s daughter, who has wrongly been sentenced to...
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Orlando Furioso: Enchanted knights and the lecherous hermit
At the end of the sixth canto of Orlando Furioso, the knight Ruggiero had been transported by the hippogriff to Alcina’s island. Despite his determination to avoid her, he was lured into her city by...
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Twentieth Century Vermeer: William McGregor Paxton
It’s not very often that you come across an artist active in the twentieth century who not only develops from the style and optics of Vermeer, but painted several ‘problem pictures’. Not only that, but...
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Orlando Furioso: The orc’s vile appetite, and skewered Frisians
Overcome by his lust for the beautiful Angelica, an old hermit has driven her to be dumped on a remote and hostile beach. He then gave her a sleeping potion, with the intention of raping her while whe...
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Orlando Furioso: A wife marooned and Angelica fed to the orc
This week, I start Canto 10 of ‘Orlando Furioso’, which contains one of its most popular stories, and has been extensively painted. Because there is another very similar but different story at the...
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Orlando Furioso: Angelica rescued and the orc slain
Ruggiero, flying on the hippogriff, has just discovered Angelica, who is chained naked to a rock to await the arrival of the sea orc and her death. Ruggiero lands by her, and immediately thinks of his...
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Orlando Furioso: Magic castles and the vanishing Angelica
There have just been two encounters with the sea orc: first Ruggiero rescued Angelica from certain death in its monstrous jaws, but was unable to kill it. He therefore used his Magic Shield to put it...
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Orlando Furioso: Saracens attack Paris, and a self-healing monster
Agramante, the King of Africa, had decided to launch a major assault on the city of Paris before Charlemagne’s reinforcements arrived from Britain and elsewhere. The day before this, Charlemagne’s...
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Orlando Furioso: Rinaldo in combat, and Charlemagne’s palace under threat
While the Saracens have been making a major assult on the besieged city of Paris, Ariosto took time out to tell the story of the knight Astolfo, and his adventures in Egypt during his return journey to...
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Orlando Furioso: Escaping another orc, and a cowardly imposter
Agramante’s massed Saracen forces have launched their attack on the besieged city of Paris. Although reinforcements led by Rinaldo have so far been successful in defending the city from outside, the...
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Paintings of 1919: Narrative
Towards the end of each year, I take a look at a selection of paintings which were completed a century ago. In this article, I start by showing some of the narrative paintings which were completed in...
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Work in Progress: Renoir’s Judgement of Paris
Relatively few of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s drawings have survived, as he treated them as scrap paper, using what would now be precious artworks to light his stove. One of his few finished oil paintings...
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Orlando Furioso: Rodomonte diverted, and a woman regains her armour
Ariosto is infuriatingly adept at juggling with the multiple narrative threads in Orlando Furioso: as we start Canto 18, Orlando himself, and Angelica, are fading from memory, and the siege of Paris is...
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Paintings of breakfast
Banquets and feasts are a popular theme for paintings, as they have been in photography. This weekend I’m going to look at selections of paintings of the other two universal mealtimes, breakfast and...
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Paintings of lunch
After the breakfasts of yesterday’s article, we come on to lunch. Whereas the artist’s breakfast is often less about preparation for the day than postponing its start indefinitely, lunchtime is in the...
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Orlando Furioso: Resuscitation and Angelica’s passion
The story of Angelica and Medoro is one of the most painted sections of ‘Orlando Furioso’. To allow for a reasonable selection of its paintings, I have therefore divided this account into two articles....
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Orlando Furioso: Carving their names on trees
Angelica came across the moribund body of Medoro, a young Saracen soldier, in a wood outside the besieged city of Paris. With the help of a passing shepherd, she stopped the bleeding and took the...
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