The crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon desperately need Rinaldo back if they are to resume their assault on Jerusalem. Guelph’s party, notably the knights Charles (Carlo) and Ubaldo, have gone in search of him. But Rinaldo has been lured into a trap by the sorceress Armida, who intended to kill him. At the last moment, though, she falls in love with him and abducts him in her chariot.

That flies the couple to the distant, deserted and enchanted Fortunate Isles, where she lives in her garden that is perpetually in Spring. The wizard explains this to Charles and Ubaldo, to aid them in their mission to rescue the knight.

David Teniers the Younger’s The Magician Shows Carlos and Ubaldo the Whereabouts of Rinaldo (The search for Rinaldo) from 1628-30 is a small oil on copper painting in his series telling this section of Tasso’s epic. Here the wizard despatches the two knights to the Fortunate Isles.

At the start of canto fifteen, Charles and Ubaldo set off to retrace their steps with the wizard as their guide. The river takes them gently down to the sea, where a ship awaits. They board, and sail at miraculous speed past Ascalon and the mouths of the River Nile, westward through the Mediterranean, and through the Pillars of Hercules into the Atlantic Ocean. They eventually approach the Fortunate Isles, pull into a harbour, and the two knights disembark.

They spend the night at the foot of the mountain they have to climb to reach Armida’s garden with the captive Rinaldo. They set off at dawn, only to encounter their first obstacle: a fearsome dragon blocking their passage up the mountain. Charles draws his sword ready to slay the dragon, but Ubaldo waves a golden wand, a gift of the wizard, which drives it away.

Poussin’s The Companions of Rinaldo (c 1633-4) shows the two knights confronting this dragon. Charles stands in the centre with his sword ready, but Ubaldo behind him leaves his weapon in its scabbard and brandishes his golden wand instead. In the background at the left is the magic ship in which they sailed, and standing in its prow is the maiden who steered it.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck’s fresco of Ubaldo and Carlo free Rinaldo from Armida’s Castle from 1819-27, in the Casa Massimo, Rome, shows an interesting composite scene. To the right of centre, Charles and Ubaldo wield their sword and wand, and in the distance are Armida and Rinaldo in the garden on the summit. Amorini are playing with Rinaldo’s weapons, and his empty suit of armour has been cast into the undergrowth.

Next the pair have to face a lion, which is similarly dismissed with a wave of the wand. After that comes an army of animals they disperse readily, and Charles and Ubaldo are on the ascent towards the stretch of snow and ice they must cross before reaching Armida’s eternal Spring. Once up at the top, the two knights pause from their strenuous climb, slaking their thirst in a mountain stream. Grassy banks either side of the stream have a fine banquet laid out on them, and there are two naked young women cavorting in the water.

David Teniers the Younger’s Carlos and Ubaldo in The Fortunate Isles (1628-30) shows this moment, with the banquet laid out on a clean white tablecloth rather than grass. Surrounded by trees and standing proud on the skyline is Armida’s palace, their destination.

I only have this monochrome image of Charles-Alexandre Coëssin de la Fosse’s painting of Danish Warriors in the Garden of Armida from 1848. The two knights are dallying rather longer than their mission had intended.

Once Charles and Ubaldo can tear themselves away from these nymphs, they press on to the circular outer wall of the palace, which opens the sixteenth canto as they enter Armida’s garden.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Armida’s garden appeared on all manner of products. This wallpaper designed by Édouard Muller in 1854 is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while smaller images appeared on coffee cups and much else.

Tasso gives a brief description of the garden with its figs, apples and grape vines. Birds sing, and the wind murmurs softly. One bird speaks to the two knights, telling of the chaste and modest rose flower that springs virgin from its green leaves.

This passage about the rose was the inspiration for Marie Spartali Stillman’s exquisite watercolour of A Rose in Armida’s Garden from 1894, given by the artist as a wedding gift to a family friend.

Charles and Ubaldo then peer through the leaves and spot a loving couple, who they presume to be Rinaldo and Armida. The knight’s head rests in Armida’s lap. He then stands up and takes a crystal glass hanging at his side. Armida uses this as a mirror to adjust her hair, telling Rinaldo to keep looking into her eyes.

Tiepolo paints this clearly in his Rinaldo and Armida in Her Garden from 1742-45, now in The Art Institute of Chicago. It was originally hung in a special room dedicated to Tasso’s epic in the Palazzo Corner a San Polo in Venice, where it belonged to the noble Serbelloni family.

In Angelica Kauffman’s Rinaldo and Armida from 1771, the crystal glass is ready at Armida’s feet, and she is busy distracting him by sprinkling flowers over his head.

Francesco Hayez shows a variation in his Rinaldo and Armida from 1812-13. Anticipating the next part of Tasso’s narrative, instead of Rinaldo wearing the crystal glass at his side, his circular shield rests on the ground next to Armida. Charles and Ubaldo are shown peering from behind a tree trunk, safely in the distance.

Armida then kisses Rinaldo goodbye and leaves. Charles and Ubaldo see their opportunity and step out from the bushes, dressed in full armour. Ubaldo holds a highly polished shield up so that Rinaldo can see himself for what he has become, a woman’s dandy, not a warrior knight.

References

Wikipedia on Jerusalem Delivered.
Wikipedia on Torquato Tasso.

Project Gutenberg (free) English translation (Fairfax 1600).

Librivox audiobook of the Fairfax (1600) English translation (free).

Thomas Asbridge (2004) The First Crusade, A New History, Free Press, ISBN 978 0 7432 2084 2.
Anthony M Esolen, translator (2000) Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, Gerusalemme Liberata, Johns Hopkins UP. ISBN 978 0 801 863233. A superb modern translation into English verse.
John France (1994) Victory in the East, a Military History of the First Crusade, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 589871.
Joanthan Riley-Smith, ed (1995) The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 192 854285.
Jonathan Riley-Smith (2014) The Crusades, A History, 3rd edn., Bloomsbury. ISBN 978 1 4725 1351 9.
Johathan Unglaub (2006) Poussin and the Poetics of Painting, Pictorial Narrative and the Legacy of Tasso, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 833677.

In the middle of the night following the crusaders’ first major assault on the city of Jerusalem, Clorinda had burned their siege towers down. Tancred then mortally wounded her in a fight before realising who she was, but baptised her just before she died in his arms.

The wounded Tancred feels disgust at his killing of Clorinda, and the pair are carried back to his tent. In spite of his injuries, he makes his farewell to her corpse. She later appears to him in a dream and his emotions are reconciled following her burial.

Canto thirteen returns to the siege, and the crusaders’ need to replace their wooden towers. Ismen visits the ancient wood that’s the closest source of timber, and casts a spell to prevent any more of its trees from being felled. He then reassures Aladine that he is safe, particularly as he forecasts the weather is set to turn very hot and dry, and advises Aladine he should sit tight in the city rather than try to force an end to the siege as Argante wants.

Godfrey wants to rebuild his siege towers quickly, before the defenders of Jerusalem have had time to repair the damage to the city’s defences. He dispatches men to the woods to cut down the timber required for the new towers, but they’re now repelled by the bewitched trees. Godfrey sends troops on three successive days, but each time they’re driven out by the dire effects of Ismen’s spell.

Finally, Tancred, recovered from his wounds, plucks up courage and enters the enchanted wood. He feels no ill-effects, and makes his way to its centre, where there’s a cryptic inscription written on an ancient tree. The trees then speak to him, claiming to be the spirit of Clorinda and others, warning him not to try cutting any of them down. Tancred reports this to Godfrey, who turns to other plans.

As Ismen had forecast, the weather becomes unrelentingly hot and dry. Even the nights remain hot, and crusaders are dying as a result. The nearby stream of Siloa, which had been a major supply of water, dries up, and there are deaths from dehydration. Morale collapses, with many of the crusaders questioning Godfrey’s inaction. The remaining Greeks desert and start their journey home. Godfrey prays for divine assistance and succeeds with a torrential rainstorm and the return to more comfortable conditions at last.

Canto fourteen opens with nightfall, when at last the cooler conditions enable everyone to sleep properly again. Godfrey has a vision in which he is told to recall Rinaldo from his self-imposed exile, and to absolve him from his error. No sooner does Godfrey awake the following morning than Guelph asks him for Rinaldo’s pardon, in the hope that the knight will be brave enough to overcome Ismen’s spell and cut wood to build their siege towers.

Godfrey agrees, leaving Guelph and a team of volunteers to locate and recover the missing knight. As the group are discussing where to look, Peter the Hermit interrupts and advises them to travel to Ascalon, and to ask the man they meet there.

When they reach Ascalon, a wizard with a white beard, beech crown and wand tells them to follow him as their guide. He takes them into hidden caves beneath a stream, where they see the sources of the great rivers of the world, set in a huge cavern whose walls are speckled with jewels. The wizard tells them this is the womb of the earth. He then reveals what happened to Rinaldo after he had freed the other knights who had been made captive by Armida, and how Rinaldo’s armour came to be made to look as if the knight had been killed.

Armida had been waiting for Rinaldo at the ford on the river Orontes. When he arrived, he found a column with an inscription that enticed him to go further, leaving his esquires behind as he boarded a boat. He then came to an island that appeared deserted, so decided to rest there, and put his helmet down beside him.

A little later, he heard a sound from the river, and spied a beautiful woman emerging naked from the water. She sang a song that lulled Rinaldo to sleep, then came over intending to kill him. But when she saw him breathing gently in his sleep, her anger melted away and she fell in love with him instead. She then put garlands of flowers around his neck, arms and feet that she had bewitched to act as bonds, had him lifted into her chariot, and abducted him.

This remarkable turn of events has been a favourite among painters, and a particular challenge to depict in a single image. As a classical example of what Aristotle in his Poetics refers to as peripeteia, it has led to some superb narrative paintings.

In Anthony van Dyck’s Rinaldo and Armida of 1629, the key elements of the couple and attendant symbolic amorino are enriched by a second woman with non-human legs still immersed in the river and clutching a sheet of paper, and additional amorini. Armida appears unarmed but starting to bind him with garlands, and it’s possible the letter represents her commission to murder him, which the woman in the water, perhaps a nymph, is reminding her about.

The most brilliant account to date is Nicolas Poussin’s justly famous Rinaldo and Armida from about 1630.

There are two distinctive elements within Poussin’s depiction, Armida’s facial expression, and her posture, particularly the conflict between her arms. Armida’s expression is key to understanding the narrative, as she is perplexed, in a quandary, unsure whether to kill or kiss the young knight. Armida’s right hand represents her original intent, to murder him with her dagger, an action the amorino is trying to stop. Her left hand, though, reaches down to touch his hand in a loving caress. Poussin manages to tell us what she had intended to do in the immediate past, and what she is going to do next in the future: three moments in time conveyed in a single image.

Poussin’s Rinaldo and Armida (c 1635) is a later and more explicit version of this same episode, in which Armida is falling in love with Rinaldo. There are many amorini who seem less engaged in the action. A river-god pours his river from a pitcher. In the background, Armida’s chariot is already prepared for the abduction of Rinaldo.

Sebastiano Conca’s Rinaldo and Armida from about 1725 is a return to simpler composition, based on a central triangle, and content. Armida is drawing her sword, and looking pensive, as the sole amorino reaches from above to intervene.

Tiepolo’s Rinaldo Enchanted by Armida (1742-45) is another permutation of the elements in Tasso’s story. Armida has already brought her enchanted flying chariot, in which there is another woman, perhaps Venus herself, with an accompanying amorino. Armida is almost undressed and unarmed, and her facial expression is more of unhappy pleading than internal conflict, while her female companion appears cold and unaffected.

Fragonard’s Rinaldo and Armida from 1760-65 is another elaborate painting with an abundance of amorini. Armida’s right hand clutches a dagger, and is restrained by two of the amorini, although it’s hard to determine her facial expression.

With Guelph’s party searching for Rinaldo, Armida now whisks him away in her chariot, still fast asleep, and unaware of what’s in store for him.

References

Wikipedia on Jerusalem Delivered.
Wikipedia on Torquato Tasso.

Project Gutenberg (free) English translation (Fairfax 1600).

Librivox audiobook of the Fairfax (1600) English translation (free).

Thomas Asbridge (2004) The First Crusade, A New History, Free Press, ISBN 978 0 7432 2084 2.
Anthony M Esolen, translator (2000) Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, Gerusalemme Liberata, Johns Hopkins UP. ISBN 978 0 801 863233. A superb modern translation into English verse.
John France (1994) Victory in the East, a Military History of the First Crusade, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 589871.
Joanthan Riley-Smith, ed (1995) The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 192 854285.
Jonathan Riley-Smith (2014) The Crusades, A History, 3rd edn., Bloomsbury. ISBN 978 1 4725 1351 9.
Johathan Unglaub (2006) Poussin and the Poetics of Painting, Pictorial Narrative and the Legacy of Tasso, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 833677.

There are only two ways a painter can depict reflections on water in accordance with optical reality: they can paint exactly what they see when in front of the motif, or they can understand optical principles sufficiently to recreate what they would have seen. This article looks at how those worked out in landscape paintings to the end of the eighteenth century.

Look in the landscape behind Jan van Eyck’s Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (c 1435) and you’ll see one of the earliest examples of the meticulously accurate depiction of reflections on water. These could only have resulted from careful studies made in front of the motif.

For Albrecht Dürer painting this View of Innsbruck in about 1495, this watercolour is evidence that he both recognised the challenge, and went to the trouble to paint what he actually saw, even though the overall geometry isn’t perfect, with its downward slope to the left.

Following the Northern Renaissance, other landscape painters continued this tradition, into the Dutch Golden Age.

Although Aelbert Cuyp’s View on the Rhine from about 1645 isn’t optically perfect and must at least have been finished in the studio, it demonstrates his care in trying to be faithful in its reflections.

Cuyp’s larger and more detailed painting of The Passage Boat from about 1650 is similarly attentive, implying the use of careful studies made in front of the motif.

Cuyp’s grand view of The Valkhof at Nijmegen from about 1652-54 is a fine example from later in his career.

At about the same time, Nicolas Poussin used extensive reflections to augment the placid atmosphere in his idealised Landscape with a Calm (c 1651). The upper parts of the Italianate mansion, together with the livestock on the far bank of the lake, are painstakingly reflected on the lake’s surface, telling the viewer that there isn’t a breath of breeze to bring ripples to disturb those reflections.

Closer examination of the reflections reveals small disparities, though. Poussin has broken the rule of depth order in painting the brown reflection of one of the cattle that is well behind the sheep at the edge of the lake, and there are inaccuracies obvious in the reflection of the villa. Those may well be the result of his assembling passages from the original plein air studies he used to build this composite.

His reflections appear most accurate in the passage showing horsemen at the left end of the lake. These make interesting comparison with Poussin’s contemporary Claude Lorrain, who appears to have avoided tackling the problems posed by reflections.

In Claude’s Landscape with Nymph and Satyr Dancing from 1641, another idealised composite assembled from the artist’s library of sketches, little attempt is made to depict the reflection of the prominent viaduct. What has been shown is unaccountably darker than the original, and vague in form. Most of Claude’s other paintings that could have included reflections show water surfaces sufficiently broken to avoid tackling the problem.

Paintings of Venice and London by Canaletto in the eighteenth century are also largely devoid of reflections. In his Canale di Santa Chiara, Venice from about 1730 the gondola in the left foreground has no reflection at all, and its three figures are similarly absent from the surface of the water.

Reflections return in the studio paintings of those whose sketches made in front of the motif were sufficiently detailed to include them. Among them is Claude-Joseph Vernet, whose Seaport by Moonlight from about 1771 appears faithful. Sadly, none of his preparatory drawings or sketches appear to have survived, although they were a key influence on the next generation of landscape artists.

In almost every collection of paintings from before 1900, you’ll come across works bearing mystifying titles like Tancred Baptizing Clorinda. Those names don’t come from mythology, nor are they Biblical. I suspect that most just abandon trying to read that painting, and pass on by.

In about 1585, Domenico Tintoretto, son of the famous Jacopo, painted just that, Tancred Baptizing Clorinda. Tancred was a fictional prince who fell in love with a pagan female warrior, Clorinda, but later mortally wounded her, and at her request baptised her just before she died.

They are among the leading figures in what was, until about 1900, one of the most widely-read epic poems in the western world: Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata – Jerusalem Delivered. Being so well known and loved, it was the basis for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of paintings, many by the masters. After Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it has probably been the source for more narrative paintings than any other literary work, apart from the Bible.

One of the greatest of the narrative artists to paint stories from this epic is Nicolas Poussin, whose Rinaldo and Armida from about 1630 remains one of the most brilliant narrative paintings ever made. Contemporary accounts of Poussin’s life record that his copy of Tasso’s epic was almost worn out through repeated use.

Unless you’re a scholar of Italian Renaissance literature, all you’ll see here is a pretty young woman on the one hand about to murder a sleeping knight with a dagger, and on the other hand caressing his brow.

The sleeping knight is Rinaldo, the greatest of Tasso’s Christian knights, who has stopped to rest near the ford of the Orontes. On hearing a woman singing, he goes to the river, where he catches sight of Armida swimming naked. Armida, though, has an evil aim. As a ‘Saracen’ witch, she has been secretly following Rinaldo, intending to murder him with her dagger. Having revealed herself to him, she sings and lulls him into an enchanted sleep so that she can thrust her dagger home.

Just as she’s about to do this, she falls in love with him instead, and this is the instant, the twist or peripeteia (Aristotle’s term), shown here. A winged amorino, lacking the bow and arrows of a true Cupid, restrains her right arm bearing her weapon. Her facial expression and left hand reveal her new intent to enchant and abduct Rinaldo in her chariot, so he can become infatuated with her, and forget his mission of war.

This couple are central to the complex intertwined threads within Jerusalem Delivered. Tiepolo was another artist who became obsessed with its stories and painted them on many occasions. This example shows Rinaldo and Armida in Her Garden (1742-45), and is now in The Art Institute of Chicago. It was originally hung in a special room dedicated to this epic in the Palazzo Corner a San Polo in Venice, where it belonged to the noble Serbelloni family.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck worked for eight years painting this magnificent fresco of Ubaldo and Carlo free Rinaldo from Armida’s Castle (1819-27) in another room dedicated to the epic, in Rome’s Casa Massimo.

For over three centuries, artists retold Tasso’s stories. Marie Spartali Stillman painted A Rose in Armida’s Garden as late as 1894. More of an aesthetic portrait than the depictions of others before her, Stillman gave this to a family friend for their wedding.

In 1899, John Collier tried his interpretation of The Garden of Armida in contemporary setting and dress. Although it wasn’t a success, Collier was one of the few who tried to adapt Tasso for the twentieth century.

Images inspired by the epic appeared in some of the most surprising places. This wallpaper designed by Édouard Muller in 1854 shows yet again The Garden of Armida, and is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Smaller images were to be found on coffee cups and all manner of other objects.

Jerusalem Delivered is set in the midst of the First Crusade, which for many today makes it even more difficult to access. It’s a curious fact that most Europeans and North Americans are more familiar with the history, figures, and mythology of classical Rome, than with the crusades that dominated much of European society in mediaeval times and later.

David Teniers the Younger shows this clearly in this oil on copper painting of Armida in the Battle Against the Saracens from 1628-30. Armed as an archer, the ‘Saracen’ witch rides on a chariot into battle outside a large city. It’s a painting that makes no sense at all without knowing Tasso’s epic, a bit of background about the First Crusade, and the fact that the city is Jerusalem.

Next week I set the scene for this new series by looking at paintings of that First Crusade, summarising its real history, and introducing some of the characters Tasso wrote into his poetry. I hope that you’ll join me then in the town of Clermont, France, in late 1095.

References

Wikipedia on Jerusalem Delivered.
Wikipedia on Torquato Tasso.

Project Gutenberg (free) English translation (Fairfax 1600).

Librivox audiobook of the Fairfax (1600) English translation (free).

Anthony M Esolen, translator (2000) Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, Gerusalemme Liberata, Johns Hopkins UP. ISBN 978 0 801 863233. A superb modern translation into English verse.
Johathan Unglaub (2006) Poussin and the Poetics of Painting, Pictorial Narrative and the Legacy of Tasso, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 833677.

Narrative painting of classical myths has many conventions that can appear confusing. This weekend I look at those associated with river gods and their associated nymphs Naiads, and tomorrow more recent relatives Ondines.

In Greek, and subsequently Roman, mythology, the river gods or Potamoi (Greek for rivers) are three thousand sons of Oceanus, the great river encircling the earth, and Tethys, his Titan sister and wife. A river god is both that river and a distinct deity: Achelous is the god of the River Achelous, the largest in Greece, who wrestled unsuccessfully with Hercules for the right to marry Deianira.

Associated with sources and bodies of fresh water are also water nymphs, Naiads or Potamides, often stated to be the daughters of the river gods. In ancient times, there was a weaker distinction between fresh and salt waters, so although nymphs associated with the sea are usually termed Nereids when in Mediterranean waters, or Oceanids, Naiads can also be encountered in what we would consider to be sea.

The standard depiction for any river god in a classical story is that of an older bearded man lounging by a large earthenware pot from which water pours forth into the river. This is shown well in Santi di Tito’s fresco of The Sisters of Phaethon Transformed into Poplars, from about 1570. Although this story tells how the sisters of Phaeton grieve for him after his death, and are transformed into poplar trees, as it shows a river, there must still be a god of that river.

Rubens’ delightful painting of Romulus and Remus being discovered by Faustulus, from 1615-16, shows both the river god Tiberinus and his daughter nymph, at the left with the god’s pot.

In Nicolas Poussin’s Cephalus and Aurora from 1630, the river god is again at the left, and looks tired of the whole business, with a mere trickle of water emerging from his pot.

This beautiful painting attributed to Luigi Garzi, of Alpheus and Arethusa from around 1690, shows one river god and two nymphs. The god leans on his pot, and in his left hand holds a small spade, another attribute sometimes seen with them.

Antoine Coypel’s version of the same Ovidian myth, Alpheus Chasing Arethusa from about 1710, places the river god at the lower left, and two Naiads separately on the right.

So far, the river deities have enjoyed a rather passive life in paintings, but this wasn’t a requirement. In François Boucher’s Pan and Syrinx from 1743, the nymph Syrinx is seeking the help of the river god and Naiad, as she attempts to evade Pan’s attentions. The god’s pot is almost hidden beneath luxuriant red fabric, under his right hand.

In Tiepolo’s Apollo and Daphne (c 1744-45), the river god is given much of the foreground and lower section of the painting, and holds an oar or paddle, a more unusual but distinctive attribute.

Sometimes, artists conceal the river god as if challenging the viewer to locate him. This is the case in Anton Raphael Mengs’ fresco of Apollo, Mnemosyne, and the Nine Muses (1761), in which the god’s bearded and hoary figure is tucked away behind Apollo’s legs. There’s also an Orphic tradition in which the River Mnemosyne is the source of water to bring inspiration, and this perhaps alludes to that obscure sub-narrative.

In some paintings, river gods seem to be included even when their river is nowhere to be seen. Nicolas-Guy Brenet’s painting of Aethra Showing her Son Theseus the Place Where his Father had Hidden his Arms (1768) tucks this extra into the lower left corner again.

Martin Johann Schmidt’s Labour of the Danaides (1785) informs us that the Danaïds were also water-nymphs by placing a river god at the left. They were condemned to keep trying to fill this leaky container with water as their penance in the underworld.

Walter Crane shows the association between Naiads and other nymphs in his watercolour of Nyads and Dryads, probably painted between 1880-1900. He melds the Dryads in with their trees, puts the ‘Nyads’ or Naiads in the water, and has a river god watching from the reeds in the distance.

By the end of the nineteenth century, enthusiasm for the tradition of showing river gods was waning, and nude, cavorting Naiads came to the fore. One of their greatest exponents was John William Waterhouse, who led with this first tentative retelling of the myth of Hylas in 1893, in A Naiad, or Hylas with a Nymph.

Hylas was companion and servant to Heracles (Hercules), who accompanied the hero on Jason’s ship Argo. When the Argonauts were ashore in modern Turkey, Hylas approached the spring of Pegae, where the Naiads fell in love with and kidnapped him. He vanished without trace, leading Heracles and Polyphemus to search for him at length. They were delayed in this so long that the Argo sailed without them.

This first version shows one of the Naiads discovering the sleeping Hylas by a small river. There’s no sign of any river god, but there are some goats on the right side of the painting.

Three years later, Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) stays closer to the myth. Hylas holds an earthenware pot, almost as if he were about to become the river god.

In January 2018, this well-known painting was removed from exhibition in Manchester, England, and replaced by a notice which explained that a temporary space had been left “to prompt conversations about how we display and interpret artworks in Manchester’s public collection”. The painting soon returned after protests. It’s surprising that more than a century after it was first exhibited, it was still capable of causing such controversy.

Waterhouse is not the only artist to have courted controversy with this story. Henrietta Rae’s Hylas and the Water Nymphs from about 1909 was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1910, and is no less fleshly than Waterhouse’s version. Rae was a pioneer in her painting of nudes, at a time when most of society still considered that women shouldn’t be allowed to attend classes learning to draw or paint nude models.

Edward Poynter’s Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1903) might appear to be still more exploitative of the male appeal of the female nude, but there’s a more complex narrative behind this scene. Its literary reference is most probably to the Naiads of Homer’s Odyssey, book 13, who live in a sea cave, updated to encompass more contemporary references to Wreckers, who lured ships onto the rocks in order to steal their precious cargos: sirens without the socially unacceptable habit of cannibalism.

The great majority of paintings are made on rectangular supports, but since ancient times some artists have opted for circular or elliptical shapes instead. These are known as tondo, from the Italian rotondo meaning “round”, with the plural of tondi, or tondos if you really must.

This tondo of a red-figure Attic cup, now in the Louvre, is typical of classical depictions of Triptolemus and Ceres, and dates from 470-460 BCE. The young deity is sat in Ceres’ special winged chariot, as she provides him with seed to be distributed to the lands around the world.

Fabricating a perfect tondo using wooden panels has remained relatively unusual, probably for practical reasons. The increasing use of fabric stretched on a wooden frame enabled them to become more popular, as they did during the Renaissance.

Far Bartolomeo’s tondo of the Adoration of the Child (c 1499) is a fine painting of an enormously popular Christian scene, with Jesus’ parents paying their respects to the baby.

The softer geometry of circles and ellipses makes tondi ideally suited to portraits of the Madonna and child, and for portraits of women more generally. Their use has proved particularly successful in the paintings of Raphael.

Raphael’s Alba Madonna was probably painted around 1510, and has spawned many replicas. It was commissioned by a bishop for the church of the Olivetans in Nocera dei Pagani, a town on the coastal plain of the south-west of Italy, in the province of Salerno. Its landscape background is also notable.

Of all Raphael’s tondo Madonnas, it’s his Madonna della Sedia (Madonna of the Chair) from 1513-14 which is my favourite. It shows a thoroughly real and natural mother with two infants, every surface texture rendered as in life, in a close-cropped composition matched to its shape.

Tondi have also proved ideal for self-portraits.

This small undated Self-portrait shows Sofonisba Anguissola, the first great female master.

Although his best-known paintings were all rectangular, Nicolas Poussin’s later tondo Time Defending Truth against the Attacks of Envy and Discord (1641) puts Father Time at its centre, with a firm grip around Truth’s waist, while Envy and Discord sit below them. On this occasion Time doesn’t have a hand free for an hour-glass. This appears to have been projected for placement in a round ceiling, another good reason for his choice of format.

Although Tiepolo’s Discovery of the True Cross and Saint Helena (c 1743) is painted on a flat tondo, it was intended for display from the ceiling of the Capuchin church in Castello, as demonstrated in its projection.

In about 1780, Angelica Kauffman painted this delightful tondo of Cymon and Iphigenia, a variation on a popular theme.

Girodet chose a large elliptical tondo for his ‘revenge’ portrait of Mlle Lange, who had refused his previous portrait of her. As a motif in painting, Danaë had come to be represented as a reclining, beautiful, nude woman, on whom a stream of golden coins was falling, and it was that stream Girodet wanted to exploit. It could have only one reading in this context: that Mlle Lange sold her body in return for money, and Girodet was happy to be even more explicit.

Tondi were also imitated on occasion. Ford Madox Brown’s first painting to establish his interest in more complex storytelling was The Last of England, which he started as his response to the emigration to Australia of the only Pre-Raphaelite sculptor, Thomas Woolner, in 1852.

Brown’s original oil version is one of his most subtle compositions. Central to its imitation of a circular tondo is a middle-class couple who are not enjoying the fact that their migrant ship is ‘all one class’. They both stare with grim determination at the prospect of sharing the next few weeks with the rowdy working class passengers behind them, eating the same increasingly stale vegetables which are now slung from cords around the ship’s rail in front of them.

This isn’t just a couple, though: look closely at their hands, and the woman’s left hand is clutching the tiny hand of her baby, who is safely swaddled inside her weatherproof hooded travelling cape. Her right hand, wearing a black leather glove, grasps that of her husband, whose left hand is tucked under his heavy coat. Splashes of brilliant colour are supplied by the wind blowing the woman’s ribbons.

Richard Dadd’s Contradiction: Oberon and Titania from 1854-8 develops his early faerie paintings into a new and unique style, and was painted for the hospital’s first resident Physician-Superintendent, William Charles Hood.

Dadd takes its theme from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and there’s hardly a square millimetre of canvas into which he hasn’t squeezed yet another curious detail. Like other great imaginative painters such as Bosch before, his dense details dart about in scale: there are tiny figures next to huge leaves and butterflies, and towards the top these distortions of scale generate an exaggerated feeling of perspective, which his choice of format may have enhanced.

Carlos Schwabe’s watercolour tondo portrait of Medusa from 1895 is one of the most startling paintings in the round.

All good art suppliers continue to do a steady trade in tondi.