William Etty, R.A. 1787-1849

Etty seems to have made two versions of the present subject from Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene. The other version, which is similar in composition to the present painting and almost exactly the same size, was in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight until the 1950's and was acquired by the Tate Gallery in 1958. (See Dennis Farr, William Etty, 1958, cat. no. 44, pl. 46). One of the versions was shown at the Royal Academy in 1833, no. 7.

The scene depicted in Etty's painting comes from Book III, Canto XII, verses XXX-XXXIV of The Faerie Queene. the heroine Britomart, intended as a type of Queen Elizabeth and representing the virtues of valour and chastity, enters a chamber in which an evil sorcerer holds Amoret captive: 'that same woefull Lady, both whose hands / Were bounden fast, that did her ill become, / And her small waste girt rownd with yron bands / Upon a brasen pillour, by the which  she stands.' The 'vile Enchanteur sate, / Figuring strange characters of his art: / With living blood', a spell with which he sought to cause Amoret to fall in love with him. 'Soone as that virgin Knight he saw in place, / His wicked bookes in hast he overthrew' and 'fiercely running to that Lady trew, / A murdrous knife out of his pocket drew.' Britmart and the sorcerer fought, but at the moment when her tormentor was about to be killed, 'the Lady, which by him stood bound, / Sternly into her called to abstaine / From doing him to dy. For else her paine / Should be remedilesse; sith none but hee / Which wrought it could the same recure againe. / Therewith she stayd her hand, loth stayd to bee; / For life she him envyde, and long'd revenge to see.'