(Italian 1781-1835)

A raid on a religious site, oil on laid paper, 11-1/4 x 16-7/8 in.; Orientalist gilt wood frame, 15-1/2 x 20-5/8 in.

Provenance: Private Collection

Note: The painting appears to be a variation on another by Pinelli with the same devices. It takes its title from the Italian epic La Gerusalemme Liberata (The Freed Jerusalem) by poet Torquato Tasso, which tells a fantastical and mythologized version of the First Crusade and Siege of Jerusalem of 1099 under Godfrey of Bouillon. Specifically, the work depicts the seventh octave of the poem's second canto, in which, following a plan laid by the sorcerer Ismen, the Muslim King breaks into a church and steals a hidden icon of the Virgin Mary. The octave reads translated as follows:

Advised thus, the king impatient
Flew in his fury to the house of God,
The image took, with words unreverent
Abused the prelates, who that deed forbode,
Swift with his prey, away the tyrant went,
Of God's sharp justice naught he feared the rod,
But in his chapel vile the image laid,
On which the enchanter charms and witchcraft said.