Orlando seeking Angelica saves Bireno (Orlando furioso, 1584, c.9) - G. Porro

In the foreground, Orlando, who has left Paris in search of Angelica, crosses the camp of the sleeping Saracens and asks a soldier if he has seen his beloved (stanzas 3-7).    

In the upper left part of the engraving, Orlando (ORL) walks onto the pontoon where the young woman in the boat will take him across to Brittany in exchange for his promise to free the Ebudians from the orc (stanzas 8-14). On the right, Orlando leaves Saint Malo by boat (stanzas 15-16). Following a storm, he arrives in Antwerp at the top left, where an old man (Vecchio) takes him to Olimpia, who, on the far left, tells him her story (stanzas 17-57).    

On the right, Orlando, who has promised his help to Olimpia, enters the fort of Dordrecht and triumphs over Cimosco despite the latter's rifle (stanzas 61-77).    

At the top center, Orlando throws the diabolical rifle into the sea (stanzas 89-91).        

Girolamo Porro seems to have organized his image around two main spaces, the Saracen camp below and the sea above, with the river separating Normandy from Brittany becoming an extension of the latter. The episodes of the damsel in the boat, Antwerp, and Dordrecht are distributed around this enclosed sea, circumscribed like a stage: as in the theater, nothing happens on stage; the reality of the story is “marginal”...  

In contrast, the lower section is organized according to the device of the encounter; it repeats a recurring motif in quest-based narratives: the knight meets someone on his way who provides him with information and thus moves the story forward. However, this is still an anti-performance, as no soldier gives Orlando any information about Angelica.    

The engraving clearly superimposes Roland's requests: at the bottom, the request to the unfaithful soldiers; in the center, the request to the young girl in the boat; at the top, the request to the old man of Dordrecht. The motif of the request is fundamentally part of the narrative model.