GIOACCHINO ASSERETO | Rinaldo stopping Armida from taking her life

Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 17 October 1997, lot 91 (as attributed to Gioacchino Assereto, Tancred and Clorinda);

Acquired by the present owner in January 2004.

T. Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, e i pittori della sua scuola, Soncino 2011, vol. II, pp. 666–67, cat. no. I25, reproduced (as by the workshop of Assereto).

This is one of three versions of the same composition, depicting the final moments of an episode from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata when Rinaldo is forced homeward, duty-bound, and leaves the swooning Armida cursing on the shore. The principal version of the composition, which is of smaller dimensions than the present work, is widely considered to be that in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin.¹ It is, however, a painting whose authorship has been the subject of much debate: on its introduction to the museum in 1982 it was attributed to Andrea Ansaldo but three years later Franco Boggero first published it as a work by Gioacchino Assereto.² Then, more recently, in a 2004 exhibition at the Galleria Sabauda, Maestri genovesi in Piemonte, it was re-attributed to Ansaldo by Arnaldi di Balme.³ Dott.ssa Anna Orlando and Dr Mary Newcome Schleier, however, believe both the Sabauda version and the present work to be fully autograph paintings by Assereto. 

Zennaro (see Literature), believes both the present painting and the Sabauda version to be workshop productions based on a third, smaller version, in a private collection in Turin.⁴

¹ 105 x 156 cm.; see Zennaro 2011, vol. II, p. 667, cat. no. I26, reproduced.

² F. Boggero, Torquato Tasso, 1985, pp. 314–16, no. 9.

³ A. di Balme, Maestri genovesi in Piemonte, exh. cat., Turin 2004, pp. 140–41, no. 29.

⁴ 141 x 178 cm.; see Zennaro 2011, vol. I, pp. 340–41, cat. no. A79.