From narrative to stage: Orlando Furioso in the Effiat Cycle

What exactly do we mean when we say that the twelve paintings in the Château d'Effiat cycle represent, narrate, illustrate the Orlando furieux ? Do they represent the same episode in different ways ? Or do they tell a story that follows episode after episode ? And if so, in what order? As we shall see, there are no simple answers to these seemingly straightforward questions. The aim here is to investigate the precise order, function and meaning of the episodes depicted, adopting the method of reading the illustrative engravings that preceded these paintings and constituted the main pre-existing iconographic material. It is assumed that, at least initially, the painter adopted compositional principles similar to those of the illustrator. We'll see, however, that he gradually freed himself from them, moving from a narrative to a scenic composition.

This investigation has led us to propose an order of succession for the paintings that is significantly different from the order hitherto generally adopted. For the sake of clarity, we'll refer to the paintings by the following headings, which will be justified as the analysis progresses:

1. Angelica and Medoro, ref. 52.5.3
2. Orlando and Manilard, ref. 52.5.4
3. Revelations to Orlando : the vision of Angelique, inv. n° 52.5.1
4. Revelations to Orlando : the discovery of the monograms, inv. n° 52.5.5
5. Revelations to Orlando : the arrival at the shepherd's house, inv. n° 52.5.6
6. Revelations to Orlando : Orlando refuses the cup of wine, inv. n° 52.5.7
7. Orlando's madness : Orlando draws Durandal, inv. n° 52.5.9
8. Orlando's madness : Orlando destroys the fountain, inv. n° 52.5.8
9. Orlando's madness : Orlando tears off his armor, inv. n° 52.5.10
10. Orlando's madness : Orlando rips out a tree, inv. n° 52.5.11
11. History of Isabella and Zerbino : Mandricardo versus Zerbino, ref. 52.5.12
12. History of Isabella and Zerbino : Zerbino's death, ref. 52.5.2

By these headings, we intend from the outset to highlight the overall structure of the cycle, which we believe is ordered into two introductory tableaux, then two series of four tableaux, centered the first on the revelation made to Orlando of the story of Angelica and Medoro and the second on the madness triggered by this revelation, and finally two concluding tableaux, composed to parallel the introductory tableaux. We will proceed to analyze the content, composition and methods of illustrating the text implemented in these tableaux in this order.

Angelica gives Medoro a ride on a shepherd's horse (Effiat cycle)

Angelica and Medoro

A young man dressed in yellow and pink falters in the arms of the shepherd who carries him. His right arm limply draped around the neck of his rescuer, his left arm bare and dangling, he stares to the right, eyes lost in the void : the moment before, he saw himself dying. His left leg still resting on the ground, his right thigh and torso firmly gripped by the shepherd, hoisting him towards the kneeling horse on the right, which will lead him to the hamlet where he will be rescued. In the foreground /// On the right, a child holds the bridle. The wounded man's quiver, with arrows, lies abandoned on the ground amid red flowers: on the left, a bluebell and roses; on the right, perhaps ranunculus. Behind the shepherd, a woman in a blue dress with a white flowered waistcoat looks attentively at the man she has just rescued. She still holds in her left hand the magic herb that brought him back to life[1]. This attentive, caring gaze, which is not yet loving, which is still that of the doctor on his patient, contrasts with that of the shepherd, worried, impressed, paradoxically more moved.

The sequence is painted in a vast landscape of forest and countryside. A stretch of water can be seen in the distance, with mountains in the background. On the left, depicted on a much smaller scale, a woman kneels, wearing the same blue dress with mostly white flowers : this is the same character, Angelica, the main heroine of Orlando furieux, the princess of Cathay[2] with whom Orlando, Charlemagne's nephew, the hero of Roncesvalles, the hero of the oldest French chanson de geste[3], fell madly in love. But it's not Orlando she's confronted with here  it's Medoro, a simple soldier, what's more from the other side, the Saracens. We recognize Medoro seated in front of Angelica by the same yellow and pink tunic he wears in the foreground right between the shepherd's arms. Here, on the left, the shepherd takes him by the shoulder, already starting to lift him up. His quiver is at his feet, the same humble infantryman's quiver that is reproduced on the right at the feet of the other himself and will contrast, in subsequent paintings, with the sword, shield, helmet and horse of a Orlando or Zerbino.

On the same painting, then, characters are depicted at least twice, at two different times. The same place is found in two places. This disrupts our habits inherited from the classical rules of representation of a pictorial scene, in the manner of an Italian-style theater scene, with its single vanishing point and its Aristotelian respect for the unities of time, place and action.

Here, it's quite a different matter : this painting doesn't represent a moment, a pregnant instant[4] concentrating all the dramatic intensity of the action ; it tells us a story, whose successive episodes it develops. First, Angelica found Medoro wounded in the forest, as shown on the left. Then the shepherd hoisted Medoro onto his horse to take him home and nurse him back to health.

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If we now look up a little further to the left, we distinguish two figures in front of a tree : on the right we find our Angelica in blue and white and our bearded Medoro in pink and yellow reaching his right hand towards the tree. This episode occurs later in the story: Medoro is cured, and Angelica has not only fallen madly in love with him, but has married him among the shepherds (XIX, 34). The young couple enjoy perfect love in the forest, and Medoro engraves their intertwined initials on the rocks and bark of the trees (str. 36). This number, engraved all over the place, is to play a fundamental role in the story, and can even be considered the event that binds all its parts together. Indeed, some time later, when Angelica and Medoro have finally left for China, where their kingdom awaits them (str. 41), Orlando, passing by, discovers the engraved figures (XXIII, 102), understands that Angelica has preferred another man to him, and sinks into madness in despair of love: the cycle of paintings at the Castle of Effiat tells the story of this madness, which originates here, from these engraved figures.

So, we should read this painting a little like a comic strip : counter-clockwise we follow the encounter on the bottom left, the rescue on the right, and the lovemaking on the top left. In this sequence, however, the one on the right is depicted on a much larger scale, and is therefore privileged. This is not a matter of perspective: the three groups of characters painted in the picture do not exist separately and simultaneously in a homogeneous space-time. It's a question of scale: the painter establishes a hierarchy of importance between these three groups; he selects and prioritizes a sequence in the story to which he wishes to draw the viewer's attention. He explains why he chose this sequence: Medoro's rescue follows immediately on from Angelica's encounter with him, and this rescue precipitates their love affair, the engraved figures and Orlando's madness. The essence of what has gone before, destined to give birth to what is to come, Medoro's rescue constitutes a pregnant moment.

The logic of narrative succession is the logic of the first illustrative engravings to appear in the 16th century, in the wake of the great iconographic programs of Gothic Europe : bas-relief cycles in churches, tapestry series, large full-page illuminations in in-folios with historical content. Scenic logic, on the other hand, based on the exclusive selection of a prominent moment, is the logic which, on the model of easel painting, gradually asserted itself in illustrative engraving from the end of the 16th century, but did not triumph definitively until the 18th century.

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The compositional principle of the paintings in the Château d'Effiat cycle might therefore seem, at first glance, to obey an archaic, even outdated, compositional logic. Unless, that is, these paintings are not exactly... paintings! Two elements need to be taken into account  firstly, they illustrate a text, the Orlando furieux, and they illustrate it within the logic of a cycle of paintings, necessarily narrative  secondly, they may have been conceived as tapestry cartoons, whose compositional principles evolve more slowly than those of easel painting. The latter rarely retained the rescue episode in the story of Angelica and Medoro. We can cite several compositions by Giovanni Lanfranco, a painting by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli : all favor the couple formed by Medor lying wounded, and Angelica beside him[5], i.e. the previous sequence, represented bottom left on our painting. But the most popular sequence is the following one, featuring pastoral love and the engraved cipher.

Angelica and Medoro - Dubreuil

Angelica and Medoro - Bloemaert

If we compare the Angelica and Medoroby Toussaint Dubreuil (ill. 2), painted around 1580, with that by Abraham Bloemaert (ill. 3), painted in the 1620s, i.e. when the Effiat cycle was realized, we can measure the change in logic. Both paintings depict Medoro engraving the lovers' cipher with Angelica beside him. In Dubreuil's painting, executed in the renaissant style of the Fontainebleau school, while Medoro concentrates on his inscription on the right and Angelica languishes against him /// observes his work attentively, Orlando appears in the left background. In the narrative, Orlando appears in the forest only after the couple has left, so there is no meeting or even simultaneity of presences. The painting can therefore be read narratively, as a progression in time as we move towards the background of the image.

In Bloemaert's painting, the couple formed by Angelica and Medoro are also installed on the right-hand side of the picture, and in the same way Medoro engraves the figure while Angelica leans against him. Their eyes meet, and it is this meeting that is inscribed by the number[6]. On the left, the shepherd's house can be seen in the background. In front of it, two figures are seated, almost indistinct. These figures could represent another episode, but they have become decorative. They characterize the site of the scene, indicating its pastoral setting, which is corroborated by the landscape as a whole, a landscape very close to that of the Effiat cycle. In Bloemaert's work, there is only one moment, eternalized by the meeting of gazes: not the progressive movement of a narrative, but the motionless intensity of desire, which passes entirely through the face-to-face contemplation.

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The choice of this episode from Angelica and Medoro precipitated this shift to the stage. Sixteenth-century illustrative engravings, on the other hand, are composed according to a radical narrative logic  the foreground sequence is not chosen by the artist or his patron  it is ordered by the cutting of the text. It corresponds to the first sequence of the narrative in the song that is illustrated  we then move forward into the text as we progress towards the background of the image.

Cloridan and Dardinel dead; Guidon & Marphise (Orlando furieux, Antwerp, 1558, canto 19)

In the in-4° edition printed by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari in Venice in 1542[7], for Canto XIX of the Orlando furieux that concerns us here (ill. 4), the foreground is occupied by the battlefield where Dardinel and Cloridan lie dead, along with the wounded Medoro, while Zerbino's troop, which has massacred them, moves off to the left into the forest. Angelica, accompanied by the shepherd, only appears in the background in the center[8]. In the same shot on the right, two riders are engaged in single combat; the one on the right is a woman, recognizable by her dress fluttering in the wind behind her legs. This is Marphise, whose story Ariosto abruptly resumes in the middle of Canto XIX[9], leaving Angelica and Medor stranded on the Parisian plain to bring the warrior's ship to Alexandrette, the city of the Amazons in southern Turkey (XIX, 63). In front of the harbor, Marphise fights ten horsemen, the engraving probably depicting the face-off with the last one, the black rider, Guidon[10]. The narrative heterogeneity of the performance space is even stronger.

Orlando overthrows Manilard and puts Agramant's allies to flight (Cycle d'Effiat)

Orlando and Manilard

After the cause of the madness, Angelica's encounter with Medoro, comes the subject of the cycle, Orlando, the knight par excellence, depicted from the outset in all his warrior fury. Clad in steel, gold, crimson and saffron, Orlando and his horse Bride-d'or rush his adversary, knocking him and his mount to the ground. First he struck Alzird: we see him expiring behind him (XII, 75). He then tried to strike Manilard, but his sword Durandal turned in his hand, miraculously sparing his adversary (str. 83). No matter: eyes bulging, mouth ajar, Orlando pushes Bride-d'or forward, overthrows Manilard, who falls under his horse and continues on his way.

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It was by chance that Orlando, off on his own in search of Angelica, came across the troop of Alzird, King of Tremizene, and Manilard, King of Noricie, who had come to join their suzerain Agramant, who was laying siege to Paris. Orlando was unafraid of the unequal forces at play: using the element of surprise, he swooped down on his adversaries and put them to flight. This episode is recounted at the end of Canto XII, a song dominated by the massive presence of the magician Atlant's castle, into which Orlando enters in pursuit of a simulacrum of Angelica, and from which he emerges behind the real Angelica, also pursued by Sacripant and Ferragus. The episode with Alzird and Manilard is almost a pause, an incidental diversion, in this frantic pursuit. It is therefore virtually never depicted. We only see it in the highly detailed engravings of the Valgrisi edition (1556, ill. 5), whose illustrator might be Dosso Dossi, and the Franceschi edition (1584, ill. 6) illustrated by Girolamo Porro. The episode appears in both at the very top of the engraving on the left, above Atlant's castle,

The Cycle d'Effiat painting shows Orlando in full light in the left foreground ; Manilard and Alzird's men flee into the darkness of the wood in the right background. This composition is symmetrical with that of the Angelica and Medoro painting, to which this Orlando et Manilard parallels. Medoro is raised on a horse, Manilard is unhorsed ; Angelica saves Medoro, Orlando crushes Manilard  the first painting depicts the awakening of love, the second warlike fury : it is the combination of these two feelings that will produce Orlando's furia.

Here, the painting is not broken down into sequences representing different moments. Each character is represented only once. Certainly, in Ariosto's text, a good ten stanzas elapse between Alzird's death at the start of the battle and Manilard's overthrow, which signals its end and causes his entire troop to flee. The painter has condensed the events, but this condensation is a theatrical license that scenic painting allows itself: it is even characteristic of the pictorial moment. Thus, visually, the two paintings that open the cycle are perfectly symmetrical ; but semiologically, they obey different compositional logics : Angelica and Medoro still belongs to the old world of Gothic narrative images, which is the world in which Ariosto composed  Orlando and Manilard, on the other hand, belongs to the new world, initiated by Italian pictorial and theatrical scenography. This world is just beginning to penetrate France, where the theatrical stage is still a compartmentalized stage[11].

This new world engages not only shapes and composition. If we compare the depiction of the episode of Orlando and Manilard in the engravings of the Valgrisi and Franceschi editions with the way it is represented on our painting of the Effiat cycle, we see an essential difference. In the Valgrisi edition, the illustrator depicted Manilard and /// Alzird stretched out on the ground behind Orlando, who raced to meet two Saracen attackers half-hidden by a mountain. All that can be seen of these two adversaries are the heads of their horses, also galloping against Orlando. The model used is that of heroic combat, of face-to-face confrontation: the great canonical model of chivalric performance. In Franceschi's edition, Girolamo Porro also depicts warriors stretched out on the ground  above them, and therefore behind them, Orlando with sword raised gallops off against the troop of foot soldiers who, also brandishing their swords, are preparing to face him.

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No face-off on the Effiat cycle board. Not only do Manilard and Alzird's troop turn their backs and flee into the woods, but their leaders are ignominiously crushed under Orlando's horse, with no chance of courageously facing their adversary. Such a depiction is much more faithful to Ariosto's text, which, after Manilard's overthrow, compares the soldiers' flight to a flock of starlings. But it contravenes the codes of epic iconographic representation generally respected by illustrators: in the sixteenth century, these codes were more powerful than the principle of fidelity to the text. If we consult the woodcuts of the Giolito de' Ferrari edition, we see that 10 of the 46 songs are illustrated by a face-to-face combat in the foreground[12]  in three other cases, one of the two combatants is mounted on a hippogriff[13]  in two cases, the central representation is the dishonorable one of a pursuit[14] ; in only one case, the last, the hand-to-hand combat of Roger and Rodomont presents both warriors down and Roger crushing Rodomont beneath him with his body (ill. 7). But even in the latter case, the crushing of the warrior is somehow offset by the depiction of the two horses on the sides watching the fight and, they, nobly facing each other.

Roger kills Rodomont (Orlando furieux, Antwerp, 1558, canto 46)

The painter's aim in the d'Effiat cycle is not so much to depict the humiliation of the adversary as Orlando's murderous madness. He sets up a character and follows a theatrical logic of representing passions. In the bottom left-hand corner, a fist closes over the pommel of a sword whose blade has been sliced cleanly[15]. This fist cannot belong to Alzird, pierced and knocked backwards: this is already Orlando's barbarism, through which the very heart of the chivalric system is reached and deconstructed. The d'Effiat cycle conveys Ariosto's own project, which his illustrators had always been careful to attenuate, water down, normalize  the new world, with its visual scenes and temporal condensations, is built on the collapse of the old values of chivalry. Faced with chivalry turned to butchery, the pastoral of Angelica and Medoro, the society of shepherds it introduces, the equality of lovers it dramatizes, takes on consistency and meaning, with its new values, only on the edge of widespread barbarism.

Revealing Angelica's story to Orlando (Effiat Cycle)

Angelica's Vision

The painting of Angelica's Vision operates the junction of Angelica and Medoro with Orlando and Manilard. This painting is by far the most enigmatic of the cycle, because unlike all the others it doesn't fit neatly into the illustration of any specific passage from Ariosto's epic.

Let's start with what we can establish with certainty : The figure seated on the left is Orlando. We recognize him by his clothes : gray shoes edged in red, yellow breeches, red tunic embroidered with gold, covered with a steel and gold chain mail and a cuirass, it's the same costume we see throughout the cycle. His face, framed by medium-length curly blond hair and an emerging Louis XIII-style beard, is also recognizable from one painting to the next. Orlando has laid down his arms beneath him  we distinguish his shield, his sword Durandal and his damascened helmet surmounted by a golden dragon.

Facing Orlando, but in the background on the right, a woman walks along the water's edge with her eyes downcast, extending her right arm behind her. The gesture is enigmatic, but the identity of the young woman is unmistakable: we recognize Angelica by her blue dress, her white embroidered surtout and the carnelian set with four large pearls that clasps the notch. It was thought on this basis that this was Orlando's premonitory dream, while still in Paris, and that Angelica's eyes appear to him, soon to be swept away in a storm[16]. But in the painting Orlando doesn't sleep and Angelica lowers her eyes  above all, in this passage none of the other characters in the painting find an explanation.

It's upon arriving at the scene of Angelica and Medoro's lovemaking in Chant XXIII that a weary Orlando lays down his weapons :

" Stunned, he dismounts and leaves Bride-d'or
to a good valet to take care of
him. another removes his weapons, another his golden spurs,
another takes his armor to shine it[17]. "

This passage explains the central group in the second shot, where we see the horse Bride-d'or surrounded by two pages, more court pages it's true than farm boys as Ariosto had imagined : just compare their elegant red feathered hat and fitted blue pourpoint with the rough brown tunic of the shepherd in the first picture. But the two pages are indeed the shepherd's valets, whom we find again in La Découverte des monogrammes, in L'Arrivée chez le berger and in Orlando refuses the cup, with the same blue and red livery. In the text, Orlando has arrived at the farm of the shepherd who has just taken in Angelica and Medoro. Here, the farm is shown in the background, on the other side of the river, bordering a village whose bell tower can be made out on the right[18].

Or in Ariosto, when Orlando arrives, Angelica is no longer on the premises. Orlando can't see Angelica, there's no meeting. It could even be said that the whole tragedy of Orlando furieux lies here in this missed encounter that will drive him mad. In the absence of an encounter, the shepherd who welcomes Orlando sets about telling him the story of Angelica and Medoro, and proves to him that it is indeed Angelica by the jewel she has given him in gratitude for his hospitality :

" This conclusion was the axe
which with one blow lifted his head from his neck
. when with his countless strokes
this scoundrel of Love was satiated.
Orlando took pains to hide his pain ; and /// yet
she's stronger than he is, and he has a hard time hiding it:
with tears and sighs, mouths and eyes
whether he likes it or not, it's got to come out at last[19]. "

The shepherd narrator is not on the canvas. But Amour decochant ses arèches is very much present, whose fatal bow causes Orlando to lose his mind. Still calm, restraining himself before he lunges, the young man is already leaning on his right hand to get up; his squinted eyes are holding back his emotion. Angelica appears to him just as he is going mad, during this brief interlude of restrained pain. Angelica's appearance is an invention of the painter, or of a secondary source, one of the countless rewritings and adaptations that flourished between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.

Orlando sees Angelica with downcast eyes, ashamed, pointing behind her to the shore : it was there, on its banks, that she found Medoro wounded and fell in love with him. It's here," confirms the page holding Bride-d'or's harness. The young peasant girl picking flowers from a basket in the third shot raises her head as if to confirm this too. And the next[20] accompanying Angelica seems to attest to this too. Three groups, formed by the young girl with the basket of flowers, the pages holding Bride-d'or and Angelica with her follower, arrange themselves around an empty space, which they border and designate, which Orlando also points to with his left hand  this is the place where Medoro has been found. It is this empty space that Orlando's empty gaze confronts as he tumbles into madness. It is this impossible confrontation that is painted here.

This emptiness, this absence of the wounded Medoro at the intersection of the three arms of the picker, Angelica and the page, is what obscures the intelligibility of the painting. As we saw in the previous paintings, the painter hesitates between the old logic of narrative composition and the new logic of scenic composition. In the old logic, the canvas space can accommodate different sequences belonging to different moments in the story. The planes that order the perspective depth stage the stages of the story. It is therefore possible to depict both Medoro wounded, Angelica picking dictamus to heal him[21], Angelica confessing to Orlando her love for the Moorish soldier (a confession that never takes place in Ariosto's text, but would be represented here by the painting in the indirect form of a vision of Orlando) and Orlando going mad. In the new logic, the space of representation is the space of an Italian-style theater stage[22], governed by the unity of time, place and action, and its visual translation, the single vanishing point of a perspective view. I therefore hypothesize that it is to conform to this new logic that the painter makes Medoro disappear, transforms Angelica gathering her herbs into a distinct character, an anonymous peasant woman gathering flowers, and makes the Angelica gone at the moment Orlando arrives a vision of Angelica by Orlando, co-present to him.

The canvas's composition is felt in this hesitation and evolution. As in the first painting, the Angelica et Medoro, in La Vision d'Angelica the painter arranges groups of characters that he levels into planes, between which he indicates a reading direction. Orlando holds out his left hand towards the second plane, where the right-hand page also holds out his left hand towards the third plane, where Angelica holds out her right hand still behind her. But this reading path no longer establishes a chronology  between Orlando seated on a mound and all the other groups of figures below, a much more decisive ground boundary is established, constituting the background on the right as a spectacle for the foreground on the left. The vision, the revelation of Angelique already theatricalizes the painting as a stage, even as the deïctic play of outstretched arms still maintains the sequential tiering.

Orlando discovers Angelica and Medoro's monogram (Effiat Cycle)

The discovery of monograms

In Ariosto's story, Orlando's discovery of the AM monograms with which Medoro has literally lined the forest comes before the moment when, after arriving at the shepherd's house and at the conclusion of his tale, he loses his mind under Amour's arrows. But the painter follows a different chronology. In La Découverte des monogrammes, Orlando no longer has a sword or shield, and he has moved away from Bride-d'or and the two pages, who can be seen on the right in the foreground and background. This painting therefore comes well after the previous one.

The logic of the narrative, in the text of Orlando furieux, progresses from the discovery of the clues, the monograms, to confirmation by the shepherd's speech, and the proofs he brings  the logic of the image here is the reverse : the speech gives rise to a vision, an apparition at once sublime and disquieting, and points above all to an empty place  the monograms provide visual confirmation of what had previously only manifested itself in hollow form. The AMs inscribe Medoro's presence in the image, a trace succeeds a ghost.

It's in this logic that we can understand Medoro's gesture : Medoro doesn't wonder, doesn't discover ; he indicates, he shows. Nisi immitam digitum : he touches with his finger what he didn't want to believe. The painter's approach here is exactly the opposite of that of the poet, who insisted on Orlando's incredulity in the face of the traces he was gradually discovering of the great love affair that was about to devastate him.

" Three times and four and six he read the inscription,
the wretch, seeking in vain
that what was written there was not there[23] ;
[...] Then he comes back to himself a bit and thinks how
it could be that the thing was not true :
that someone would thus dishonor the name
of his lady (and he believes it, desires it, hopes it)
or crush it under an unbearable weight,
under so much jealousy that he perishes;
and he would have, whoever wanted to,
perfectly well imitated as she writes[24]. "

In vain did the painter frown at Orlando. What we see on the canvas is not a hesitant Orlando, who refuses to face the evidence, who doesn't want to see. On the contrary, he's a determined young man who boldly sets foot on the fountain's step and, after placing his helmet on its edge, points to an irrefutable inscription, finding in what he reads the authentication of what he's been told, or rather of the vision he's had. He sees for himself, he sees the evidence. Orlando frowns slightly as Medoro's inscription is in Arabic: deciphering it requires an effort on his part. Medoro's hand points to the text we can't see, and at the same time follows its reading.

On the right-hand side, one of the pages sits, legs limply extended, resting and dreaming  in the background, a shepherd holding his hoe sits with his dog by the water, his /// sheep grazing around him  between them, the second page with the red feathered hat holds Bride-d'or[25]. The three characters are turned towards Orlando. Are they looking at him? They have him  in any case in their field of vision  the painter has arranged them to echo the event Orlando is experiencing[26]. Orlando reads Medor's Arabic and the shepherds read, or are about to read the gesture of Medor reading.

Between the protagonist on the left and his spectators on the right, the monogrammed tree cuts the canvas in two. This separation distributes a space of the stage proper, on the left, where the event takes place, and a space of the spectators, who witness the event as in the theater. On the edge of this separation are the monograms, i.e., that which ambivalently refuses to be deciphered and yet is open to deciphering. Between stage and parterre, the monogrammed tree institutes the screen of representation[27].

Orlando refuses the cup offered to him by the shepherd's valet (Effiat Cycle)

Arrival at the shepherd's house ; Orlando refuses the cup of wine

Arriving at the shepherd's, Orlando is disarmed by the two pages, whose blue tunic and red shirt sleeves we recognize. In the center background, another valet leads Bride-d'or, whose caparison with leather straps and red and gold tassels was already visible in Orlando et Manilard. The dining table, with its large white tablecloth, set in front of what appears less like a farmhouse than a plush manor house, appears in the background on the right, like a narrative anticipation of the next painting, where Orlando stripped of his armor sits before the table in the foreground, while the shepherd tells him the story of Angelique and Medor. Orlando turns away from the table and the cup of wine that a servant pours and holds out to him.

Visually, we have the impression of moving forward in time : Orlando emerges from the forest, then enters the shepherd's property, then sits down, then refuses the meal. Yet, if we refer to the text, we can consider that we haven't moved from stanza 116 of Canto XXIII : it's, again and again, Orlando's arrival at the shepherd's house. When Orlando refuses the cup of wine, we can make out Orlando dismounting from his horse Bride-d'or in the right background, which one of the blue-and-red-clad pages is taking by the bridle. Orlando thus never stops dismounting, and the painting resumes a narrative composition, not hesitating to represent Orlando twice, just as Angelica et Medoro depicted the couple three times on the same canvas.

This meal episode does not exist in the text of Orlando furieux. In stanza 116, the narrator explicitly reports that Orlando has refused to sit down :

" Orlando asks to lie down, not to dine
Satiated with pain and not another meal[28]. "

But Orlando finds Angelica and Medoro's odious graffiti all over the house, on the walls, on the windows. It's then that the shepherd begins to tell him the story (str. 118) : no trace then of a meal, or even a table.

On the other hand, the table-tale motif appears in illustrated editions for two other episodes of Orlando furieux, in Canto XXVIII, when. Rodomont leaves Paris, and having lost Doralice in the battle against Mandricardo, for which she was the prize, sets off for Africa, stopping on the banks of the Saône, and then in Canto XLIII, when Rinaldo arrives in a marvelous palace and is offered by his host to drink from the cup of the Morgue fairy, who reveals adulteries. These two similarities are more than mere rhetoric.

In Canto XXVIII, Rodomonte has just had Doralicia snatched from him by Mandricardo. To console him for this lost love, his host tells him the story of Giocondo[29], which revolves entirely around the infidelity of women. The story begins like that of the Thousand and One Nights : Giocondo, the most handsome man in the world, leaves Rome and his wife, with whom he is madly in love, to travel to Pavia, at the invitation of Astolfo, King of the Lombards. But he has forgotten the necklace she gave him, so he returns unexpectedly to find her in bed, entwined with a valet (str. 21). Without waking her, without a word, he leaves and withers away, until he discovers, in Pavia, that the Queen of the Lombards is also cheating on her husband, and moreover with a horribly counterfeit dwarf (str. 34). Giocondo and the king decide to make amends by debauching women the world over, and then to secure the fidelity of one woman, whom they will share between them in bed. But Fiammetta (str. 57) loves a Greek, who manages to get into the bed and sleep with her between them (str. 64). When they discover the deception, Joconde and Astolphe burst out laughing and marry Fiammetta to her Greek. Mona Lisa's story mirrors that of Orlando, who blames Angelica for deceiving him, especially with a common soldier. But the tale told by the innkeeper of Valence gives a comic twist to what Orlando experiences as a tragedy ; and his misogynistic, biased account contrasts with the shepherd's account in Canto XXIII, filled with admiration and praise for Angelica, who incidentally owed Orlando nothing.

In Canto XLIII, Rinaldo is offered hospitality in a magnificent palace on the Po plain, just outside Mantua. There, his host seats him at a table and offers him a drink from a magical cup given to him for his misfortune by the fairy Melissa, who herself got it from the fairy Morgue, who had given it to Arthur to confound Ginevra[30]. He who drinks from this cup, spills the wine if his wife is unfaithful to him : Rinaldo refuses to test the fidelity of his wife Clarice, the sister of King Yon of Gascony[31]. He thus turns away from the hated cup (Respingendo da sé l'odiato vase) in the same way that Orlando, in the Effiat cycle, turns away from the cup of wine handed to him. Rinaldo then listens to the host tell him how he, who was not so careful, seduced by Mélisse, caused his wife's infidelity and her misfortune. Likewise, Orlando listens to the shepherd's tale, but it's precisely this tale that he receives as humiliation after what he sees as Angelica's betrayal.

The painter constructs a scene in which Orlando refuses the cup of wine offered to him not from a text that would literally describe this scene, but by extrapolation from analogous scenes in Canto XXVIII and Canto XLIII, and their illustrations : for Canto XXVIII, we can cite Girolamo Porro's engraving in Franceschi's 1584 edition (ill. 9), where Rodomont is seated opposite the Valencian innkeeper ; for Canto XLIII, we prefer the engraving said to have been drawn by Dosso Dossi in the Valgrisi edition of 1556 (ill. 10), where a valet, on the left, brings Renaud, seated on the right, the cup of Melissa that his host, standing beside him, invites him to drink. These two engravings obey the rules of composition /// The text is always illustrated chronologically from front to back, from bottom to top. In the Effiat cycle, however, Orlando dismounting from horseback in the right-hand background comes chronologically before, not after : the conventions of narrative composition, now obsolete, are blurred or lost.

.

The cup that reveals adulteries (Orlando furieux, Valgrisi, Canto 43)

Orlando's madness

Orlando's folly proper begins after the meal at the shepherd's and occupies four tableaux, just as the revelation of the story of Angelica and Medoro to Orlando occupied the four preceding tableaux : these two groups of four tableaux, revelation and folly, form the core of the cycle.

Orlando draws Durandal against the monogrammed fountain (Cycle d'Effiat)

The stages of madness follow Ariosto's text and the gradual transformation of Orlando 's status: Orlando unsheathing Durandal against the monogrammed fountain is still a knight, even if he is already bareheaded, his helmet fallen at his feet (XXIII, 129-130) ; then Durandal joins the helmet on the ground and it is with bare hands that Orlando destroys the fountain (str. 131-132) ; then Orlando tears off his armor in a landscape where no human construction remains (str. 133-134)  finally, shirtless, Orlando tears off a tree : he has become a pure destructive force of nature, stripped of all humanity (str. 135-136).

Orlando dégainant Durandal obeys the same rules of scenic composition as La Découverte des monogrammes : on the left, Orlando brandishing Durandal makes the event and constitutes the scene proper, on the right, in the foreground and background, the peasants fleeing and turning around, then in the third shot the peacefully seated shepherd are the spectators of this theater whose action reverberates and dampens with distance. The river in the center establishes the boundary between the stage and the parterre.

Orlando destroys the monogrammed fountain with his bare hands (Cycle d'Effiat)

Orlando destroying the fountain insensitively finds a narrative logic, so to speak. On the left, Orlando brandishes a wedge of rock and prepares to destroy the fountain. In the background on the right, the same exhausted Orlando, recognizable by the red border of his tunic, collapses to the ground near the river:

.

" And tired at the end, finally drenched in sweat
when his defeated breath no longer responds
to his indignation, his deep hatred, his burning anger,
he falls to the meadow and turned skyward he sighs[32]. "

Orlando on day 4 rips off his armor (Cycle /// d'Effiat)

Similarly Orlando tearing off his armor is depicted once on the left and a second time on the right half-naked, pursuing two shepherds and brandishing a staff. Finally, for Orlando uprooting a tree, the painter takes up an image popularized from the earliest illustrative engravings, nude Orlando uprooting a tree : this is the image favored by the engraving of Canto XXIII in the Giolito de' Ferrari edition from 1542 (ill. 11)[33]. The painter attenuates the brutality of the original image  Orlando is no longer completely naked and no longer completely tearing down the tree  he is no longer depicted from behind, but  from the front for the scene with, as a derisory spectator, on the left, a barking dog. The Orlando in the foreground is exceptionally shown on the right, in keeping with the traditional and well-known composition of engravings, where Orlando tearing up his tree is on the right.

The same Orlando in the left background is grabbing a shepherd, while two more distant ones raise their arms to the sky and prepare to flee. In the text, Orlando first decapitates the shepherd, then grabs his body by one leg and uses it to strike everything that moves around him, even laying his human club on the ground (XXIV, 5-6). These different actions are broken down here on the canvas: the headless body on the left, the shepherd grabbed behind and the shepherd lying dead, as if asleep, in front in the foreground, are perhaps after all three different people. Ariosto, with this shepherd used as a club, takes up a motif from the Hercules furieux, Hercules slaughtering the shepherd Lichas before throwing himself into the pyre on the Œta[34]. It is indeed this furious Orlando-Hercules that the engraver had depicted in the foreground of the engraving of Canto XXIV for the Valgrisi edition of 1556 (ill. 12).

La folie de Orlando (Orlando furieux, Valgrisi, 1560, cante 24)

History of Isabella and Zerbino

The last two tableaux of the Effiat cycle illustrate the story of Isabella and Zerbino, which, at the end of the series, echoes the two tableaux with which the cycle began : the battle of Mandricard and Zerbino re-establishes the rules of chivalry that Orlando, by overthrowing Manilard without measure, had begun to break. The victory of Mandricard, a Saracen knight, makes up, as it were, for the ignominious defeat of Manilard, also a Saracen. Then, in the final tableau, the wounded Zerbino expires in Isabella's lap, repeating the motif of the first tableau, where the wounded Medoro is cared for by Angelica : but the motif is reversed  while Medoro recovers and marries the princess who saved him, Zerbino dies : the convoy to pastoral love turns into a funeral convoy.

The story of Isabella and Zerbino is told by Ariosto in Canto XXIV, from which, in the last of the four tableaux devoted to Orlando's madness, the massacre of the shepherd was already taken. Because in Ariosto's account they come as it were[35] at the conclusion of the madness episode, Isabella and Zerbino are sometimes paired with Angelica and Medoro in reductions of Orlando furieux for the theater : in 1614 and again in 1618, Nicolas Oudot published two tragedies in Troyes, attributed today to Charles Bauter and imitated from Ariosto, the first centered on Angelica and Medoro, the second on Zerbino and Isabella[36] ; in 1638, Jean Mairet melds the two plots into one and gives a tragicomedy of Orlando furieux where Angelica and Medoro on the one hand, Isabella and Zebin on the other, find themselves in the shepherd's house at the very moment Orlando's madness is unleashed. The Effiat cycle was created between Bauter and Mairet, and is part of the process of transforming Ariosto's gothic-renaissante material into a simplified, ordered fiction that responds to the new classical rules of composition.

Doralice & Isabella interrupt Mandricard & Zerbino's duel (Cycle d'Effiat)

The tableau of Mandricard's duel with Zerbino implements both semiologically and symbolically this normalization : in the narrative, Zerbino and Isabella arrive at the scene of Orlando's carnage (XXIV, 48)  Isabella piously collects her sacred weapons (str. 53[37]) and Zerbino makes a trophy of them, hanging it from a tree (str. 57). In the painting, this trophy can be seen in the background on the right; there is no trace of Orlando's devastation, no tree uprooted or cut down, no fountain destroyed, no corpses. Then Mandricard (str. 58) and his companion Doralice arrive. Mandricard seizes Durandal, which he considers his own  Zerbino opposes him, the fight ensues and Zerbino is mortally wounded (str. 64-70) : facing Mandricard brandishing Durandal on the left, we distinguish him in the center, retreating to the background, sword lowered, head falling between the ears of his horse, which swerves.

However, Isabella, depicted on the right in the painting, urges Doralice to interpose herself between the combatants (str. 72). Symbolically, Doralice is wearing a red dress fitted over a pale blue petticoat discreetly striped with white and yellow-green. The fabric of the petticoat is the same as that of Orlando's torn shirt in the previous painting, while the red of the dress recalls the red of the mad paladin's tunic. Placed frontally in the foreground, center-left of the painting, Doralice replaces Orlando : she introduces moderation and a spirit of compromise after the outburst of the previous episodes.

The painting thus represents, or at least evokes, the constitution of the trophy, then Mandricard's arrival, then his fight with Zerbino, then the fatal wound Zerbino receives, then Doralice's interposition that puts an end to the fight, a narrative that stretches over more than 25 stanzas in Chant XXIV. However, the composition is not a narrative one, with sequential groups in both time and space, in line with the principle we have seen at work in several previous paintings, and which will be repeated in the last one. The painter has condensed the narrative elements into an artificial moment that gives the illusion of being unique: it's the striking moment, crystallized by Doralice's gesture stopping the fight. Through her gesture, which suspends the action, Doralice concentrates all that has gone before, all the conflict around Orlando's weapons, and announces what is to follow, Zerbino's death.

Interposed between Mandricard and Zerbino, Doralice is also positioned opposite Isabella, who, with her horse visible behind her, watches the scene. More clearly than in any of the previous tableaux, a scenic device asserts itself here, with a stage to the left, moderated by Doralice, and a parterre to the right, where Isabella relays our gaze as spectators. Between the symbolic space of the stage and the real space of the world, the trophy serves as an interface to the border: an empty figure, it displays the knight's attributes, but indicates the absence of his person. The trophy, like the tree /// median of La Découverte des monogrammes, constitutes the screen of the performance : it indicates the chivalry we should see on stage and reminds us that we don't, delivering in a way the symbolic message of the whole cycle, the cycle's reading of Orlando furieux as an epic of the end of the epic, as the representation of the collapse of chivalry : Durandal will be stolen, the Saracens triumph, the perfect Zerbino is promised death[38].

A hermit to Isabella's rescue mourning Zerbino's death (Cycle d'Effiat)

The last painting, from La Mort de Zerbino, uses a narrative composition symmetrical to that of the Angelica et Medoro. In the second plan on the right, Zerbino toppled onto Isabella's lap expires near a fountain, which can be made out in the lower right-hand corner. On the left, unable to walk any further, he has tied his horse to a tree, which turns away so as not to see its master die. In front of Zerbino, constituting a still life in the foreground below him, his helmet, shield and sword of gold-damascened steel recall the weapons laid to rest by Orlando in a state of exhaustion in La Vision d'Angelica. But paradoxically, Zerbino's arms, which are not haloed by the legend of Orlando's, are depicted here with much greater brilliance. The message is clear  Zerbino is the perfect knight, whose gray and gold weapons reflect the brilliant distinction of his perfect courtesy, and contrast with the brutal black and bloody red of those that would nevertheless be Hector's weapons, dating from the Trojan War (XXIV, 60).

Dying Zerbino stares into the eyes of a grieving Isabella :

" Zerbino whose languid eyes are turned toward her
suffers more from the pain of hearing her moan
than from the powerful, tenacious suffering
which is now driving him to death's door[39]. "

Behind Zerbino's horse, in the left background, a hermit appears on foot, holding his walking stick in one hand and his water pot in the other. He has come from the nearby hermitage, visible between the trees above him, to fetch water from the fountain (str. 87); he arrives just as Zerbino has died. The hermit helps Isabella to lift Zerbino's body onto his steed (str. 91), and the two of them set off for Provence, where the monk knows of a rich abbey where Isabella and the dead man will be well cared for (str. 92).

Technically, the composition here is narrative, since each of the characters, the hermit, Isabella and Zerbino living and then dead, are represented twice. Unlike in Angelica et Medoro, the order of the sequences this time follows a clockwise  direction: from the group formed by Zerbino staring at Isabella, we move on to the oncoming hermit and the convoy that carries Zerbino off dead on the road.

Yet the scenic logic is already fully integrated : the groups of Angelica and Medoro each represent a successive action  for La Mort de Zerbino, the initial group sets the scene through Zerbino's intense gaze, which condenses to the image the long speech he makes to his beloved before dying :

" Of this, my heart, let no fear touch you
for I want to follow you to heaven or hell
it is necessary that our spirits one and the other unhook,
leave together, stand together for eternity[40]... "

It's no longer action, but speech that is privileged for the scene, as in the previous tableau was Doralice's speech parleying between the two assailants : in Angelica et Medoro, we essentially see the shepherd hoisting Medoro onto the horse ; while the same action, the same gesture are present in the story that La Mort de Zerbino illustrates, this gesture is not represented. In Angelica et Medoro, Medoro's face turns away from the Shepherd and Angelica, Medoro is seen but does not look  in La Mort de Zerbino, the dying man's intense gaze instead condenses the entire dramatic effect of the scene, whose spring is now essentially scopic.

Conclusion

The first lesson we can draw from this study is the painter's excellent knowledge of the text of Orlando furieux. He did not compose from a vague theme of Orlando's loves and madness, but based very precisely on the text and illustrating it according to the illustration techniques put to the test by engravers before him. In this, Effiat's cycle differs from the pictorial iconography of the Orlando furieux which precedes it, and always focuses on the same few episodes, and even essentially on Angelica in the arms of Medoro, a subject that precisely our painter has carefully avoided.

Paradoxically, it's in the two cases where the painter deviates from the text that his knowledge of both the text and its French reception[41] reveals itself best : in La Vision d'Angelica, to solve the problem of a meeting and explanation that doesn't take place between Angelica and Orlando, the painter imagines a condensation of events that anticipates, as it were, the dramatic construction Mairet would achieve in his tragicomedy of Orlando furieux in 1638. And by imagining Orlando refusing the cup of wine in the shepherd's house, he finds a way of alluding, even though they have no direct connection with his subject, to the two episodes from the Italian epic that were to become Ariosto's two most famous passages, the story of Mona Lisa and the Enchanted Cup, as attested by their inclusion a few decades later in La Fontaine's Contes et nouvelles.

In doing so, the painter of the Cycle d'Effiat, through the thoughtful construction of a four-stage journey through the twelve tableaux, captures and updates the meaning of the epic. Far from a conventional stylistic exercise on the ravages of amorous passion, the Cycle speaks of the end of the values of chivalry and the uncertainty of the religious context. It opens with the fury of men and closes with the solidarity and intervention of women: it is Doralice, a Muslim woman, who puts an end to the deadly fighting. It's a shepherd and a hermit who, from the depths of the countryside, take over from a collapsed society. Here's something to ponder in the world around us...

[1]   " was it dictam, or was it panacea ? / an herb, I don't know which, so effective... " (fosse dittamo, o fosse panacea, / on non so quel, di tal effetto piena..., XIX, 22). References to the original text of the Orlando furioso are given according to André Rochon's 4-volume bilingual edition, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1998-2002. I have based the French translation on his own. The chant number is given in Roman numerals, followed by the stanza number in Arabic numerals. 
It's with dictamus that Venus heals her wounded son Aeneas during the battle against Turnus (Aeneid, XII, 411sq). In the Middle Ages, panacea or theriac was a /// legendary cure-all. Ariosto plays between magical wonder and parody of that wonder...

[2]   Cathay designates, since Marco Polo, the north of China. Angelica is therefore Chinese. However, she is never depicted with Asian features.

[3]   La Chanson de Orlando is an 11th ^{century chanson de geste, transcribed around 1140 at Saint-Denis, allegedly by Bishop Turpin. At the end of the 15th century, Matteo Maria Boiardo wrote a sequel in the form of a half-serious, half-parodic epic in honor of the Duke of Este: this is the Orlando innamorato, the beginning of which was published in 1483 ; but the poem remains unfinished. Ludovico Ariosto, known as l'Arioste, followed with Orlando furioso, published in 1516 in 40 cantos, then in 1532 in the definitive edition in 46 cantos. Like Boiardo, Ariosto ironically claims, time and again, to have taken his story from Turpin. The international success of Orlando furieux would last well into the XIXth century.}

[4]   On the notion of the pregnant instant, introduced by Lessing in the Laocoon (1766) to characterize the concentration of time in the pictorial scene, see Orlando Barthes, " Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein ",  Revue d'esthétique, 1973, reprinted in L'Obvie et l'Obtus, Seuil, 1982, and Stéphane Lojkine, L'Œil révolté, Jacqueline Chambon, 2007, pp. 204-238. We'll see later, with Le combat de Mandricard contre Zerbino, a perfect example of a pregnant moment.

[5]   This composition is itself influenced by a similar episode in Tasso's Jérusalem délivrée, itself much more commonly depicted, where Tancrède is rescued by Herminie. This is Bernardo Castello's illustration of chant XIX for the Gentili et Guastavini edition of Genoa, 1590 (ill. 1), imitated by Michel Lasne for the French translation of 1626, from which Poussin's two Tancrède et Herminie (the Hermitage version of 1628-9 and the Birmingham version of 1634) derive.

[6]   The insistent display of eye contact is characteristic of the new stage set-up. In the d'Effiat cycle, it forms the climax of the journey, with La Mort de Zerbino.

[7]   This edition, historically the second illustrated edition of Orlando furieux, was dedicated to the Dauphin of France, which leads us to assume that several copies were sent to him. A copy is preserved in the Ferrara municipal library, shelfmark E.3.19. The Bibliothèque nationale de France owns two copies of a 2nd Giolito de' Ferrari edition, dated 1543 (Bnf RES-YD-642 and Arsenal 4-BL-2577), one copy of the 1544 edition (RES-YD-245), two of the 1546 edition. The Émile-Zola media library in Montpellier owns an in-8° edition from 1549 (call no. 34239RES). Giolito de' Ferrari printed over twenty editions in all, with 46 woodcuts illustrating the 46 songs. These woodcuts were also used, or copied, for other editions such as the Spanish translation with suite by Espinosa, published in Antwerp by M. Nucio in 1558. 
The first illustrated edition of the Orlando furieux is the Zoppino edition,  published in Venice in 1530, when the Orlando furieux still has only 40 songs. Zoppino completes his set of engravings for a new /// edition in 1536, illustrating all 46 songs. Zoppino's woodcuts are rather sketchy. 
The third illustrated edition of Orlando furieux is the Valvassori edition (Venice, 1553), which also saw numerous reprints. Valvassori's woodcuts, while not exactly copying those of Giolito de' Ferrari, adopt the same compositional principles and make grosso modo the same choices of episodes to represent. 
The engravings from the Giolito de' Ferrai editions will serve as a model for the woodcuts in the edition by Gabriel Chappuys (new French translation), Rouen, Claude Le Villain, 1618, Bnf YD-2303.

[8]   See stanzas 16 and 17 of chant XIX.

[9]   Ma di Marfisa a ricontarvi torno, " but I return to the tale of Marphise " (XIX, 42). The detail of the floating dress does not follow the text : on the contrary, the narrator is careful to indicate that Marphise dressed as a warrior is indistinguishable from the men (str. 108).

[10]  XIX, 78-79 (1st appearance of the horseman), 93-101 (the fight). Guidon's name is not revealed until the next song (XX, 7).

[11]  See Le Mémoire de Mahelot, édition critique établie et commentée par Pierre Pasquier, Paris, Champion, 2005.

[12]  Engravings of songs 1, 7, 8, 24, 27, 30, 33, 35, 38, 45.

[13]  Songs 2, 6, 10.

[14]  Songs 15 and 44.

[15]  " Not only in the air moans and complaints fly, but arms and shoulders and severed heads " (Non pur per l'aria gemiti e querele, / ma volan braccia e spalle e capi sciolti, XII, 80).

[16]  Orlando's dream is a blazon of love, all organized around Angelica's eyes : " It seemed to Orlando that, on a green shore all painted with fragrant flowers, he was contemplating the beautiful ivory and natural purple that Amour had colored with his hand, and the two shining stars where his soul was nourished caught in the meshes of Amour's net : I mean the beautiful eyes and face that had taken his heart from the middle of his chest "(Parea ad Orlando, s'una verde riva / d'odoriferi fior tutta dipinta, / mirare il bello avorio, e la nativa / purpura ch'avea Amor di sua man tinta, e le due chiare stelle onde nutriva / ne le reti d'Amor l'anima avinta : / io parlo de' begli occhi e del bel volto, / che gli hanno il cor di mezzo il petto tolto. VIII, 80).

[17]  Languido smonta, e lascia Brigliardo / a un discreto garzon che n'abbia cura ; / altri il disarma, altri gli sproni d'oro / gli leva, altri a forbir l'armatura. (XXIII, 116)

[18]  In a sense, the narrative does not progress during the four tableaux of Revelations to Orlando : Orlando keeps getting off his horse... There is no narrative succession as such, whereas the /// The following four paintings, as we shall see, organize a progression through madness.

[19]  Questa conclusïon fu la secure / che'l capo a un colpo gli levò dal collo, / poi che d'innumerabil battiture / si vide il manigoldo Amor satollo. / Celar si studia Orlando il duolo ; e pure / quel gli fa forza, e male asconder pòllo : / per lacrime e suspir da bocca e d'occhi / convien, voglia o non voglia, al fin che scocchi. (XXIII, 121)

[20]  This is admittedly a difficult conjecture, as Angelica is elsewhere never depicted with a follower. It is alone that she flees, pursued by all the knights of the earth, since Boiardo's Orlando amoureux. In his tragicomedy of Orlando furieux, Mairet, who is concerned with unity of time, imagines that Angelica and Medoro have not left when Orlando arrives, and he writes a scene in which Angelica accompanied by Bérénice (at Mairet's, the wife of Bertrand, the shepherd), desperately searches for Medoro, whom she fears has fallen victim to Orlando's murderous madness. But, in addition to the fact that Mairet's play, performed in 1638, is later than the presumed date of the paintings, and that here Angelica is not in the posture of someone searching, but rather confessing, Orlando never sees Angelica.

[21]  See, for example, Girolamo Porro's engraving for Canto XIX in Franceschi's edition (Venice, 1584, ill. 8). Porro depicts Angelica arriving on horseback in front of the wounded Medoro, then further to the left Angelica picking the dictame, then above Angelica and the shepherd lifting Medoro in front of their two horses, then above again a whole series on the loves of Angelica and Medoro.

[22]  It must be stressed that, although such a scene, practically speaking, did not yet exist in Paris in the 1620s-1630s, it had been practiced in Italy for a century and was well known in France through engraving. See, for example, Sebastiano Serlio, Le Second Livre de perspective, trans. J. Martin, Paris, 1545, p. 69 (engraving depicting the typical setting of a tragic scene, with paved floor in shortened perspective and central vanishing point emphasized by an arch and pediment).

[23]  Tre volte e quattro e sei lesse lo scritto / quello infelice, e pur cercando invano / che non vi fosse quel che v'era scritto (XXIII, 111)

[24]  Poi ritorna in sé alquanto, e pensa come / possa esser che non sia la cosa vera : / che voglia alcun cosi infamare il nome / de la sua donna e crede e brama e spera, / o gravar lui d'insoportabil some / tanto di gelosia, che se ne pèra ; / et abbia quel, sia chi si voglia stato, / molto la man di lei bene imitato. (XXIII, 114)

[25]  In Ariosto's account, when Orlando discovers the monograms, he hasn't yet arrived at the shepherd's house. Orlando does dismount to see the entrance to the cave (str. 107), but no valet takes care of his horse. Orlando then gets back on his horse (str. 115), from which he dismounts when he arrives at the shepherd's house, where he entrusts Bride-d'or to a good valet (discreto garzon, str. 116). The presence of the valet holding Orlando's horse by the bridle is an indication of the rearrangement made by the painter.

[26]  More than twenty years before Poussin's Paysage with a man killed by a snake, the painter composes his canvas as a system of repercussion of the event. Poussin's painting, also known as Les Effets de la terreur, (London, National Gallery, NG564) will constitute a textbook case (Fénelon, Félibien, Diderot...)  faced with the terrible event in the foreground (a man suffocated by a giant snake dragging him into its pond), the reaction of the characters arranged in the depth of the canvas diminishes as we progress towards the background.

[27]  On the notion of the screen and the theory of devices it engages, see Stéphane Lojkine, Image et subversion, Jacqueline Chambon, 2005.

[28]  Corcarsi Orlando e non cenar domanda, / di dolor sazio e non d'altra vivanda (XXIII, 116).

[29]  Even apart from translations of the Orlando furieux, the story had been put into French verse by Nicolas Rapin (Les Imitations de quelques chans de l'Arioste par divers Poètes François, Paris, L. Breyer, 1572) and then by Étienne Durand (Méditations, slnd, probably around 1611). It was taken up by La Fontaine in the first part of Contes et nouvelles (1664).

[30]  XLIII, 28. The story of the Morgue fairy or Morgane revealing Guinevere's infidelity to Arthur by means of an enchanted cup is recounted in the Tristan en prose. Morgane, who holds Renaud and other knights captive in her castle, is defeated by Orlando, who delivers them in Boiardo's Orlando amoureux (in the adaptation by Le Sage, livre IV, chap. XIII et XIV). But no enchanted cup in Boiardo's. 
In Ariosto's version, the story of the enchanted cup was well known in France by the second half of the XVI^e century : Louis d'Orléans translated it into French in the Imitations de quelques chants de l'Arioste, op. cit., 1572 ; Pierre de Deimier offers another translation in Les Illustres Aventures, " Aventures de Renaud ", Lyon, Th. Ancelin, 1603, p. 186-230. The tale was later adapted by La Fontaine in the third part of Contes et nouvelles.

[31]  XLIII, 6-9 (Renaud's refusal) and 66 (Clarice's evocation).

[32]  E stanco al fin / e al fin di sudor molle, / poi che la lena vinta non risponde / allo sdegno, al grave odio, all'ardente ira, / cade sul prato, e verso il ciel sospira (XXIII, 131).

[33]  The same nude Orlando from behind uprooting a tree is found in the Valvassori edition of 1553 and its later prints and in a medallion in the frescoes at Chiusa di Pesto, probably copied from the engraving in the Giolito de' Ferrari edition.

[34]  See, for example, Avelli da Rovigo's majolica in the Metropolitan Museum, or Giovanni Antonio Rusconi's engraving for LodovicoDolce's Trasformationi, Venice, Giolito de' Ferrari, 1553, p. 193 ; and Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX, 155 and 211-225. It was Lichas who had brought Hercules the tunic poisoned by the centaur Nessus, as a present from Dejanira.

[35]  Ariosto always presents his narrative sequences as breaks. As he moves from Orlando to Zerbino, he writes : " What he did there, you will have to hear elsewhere / for it is of Zerbino that it is appropriate for me first to speak. " (Quel che fe' quivi, avebe altrove a udire ; / che di Zerbino mi convien prima dire. XXIV, 14)

[36]  [Charles Bauter ?,] Tragedie françoise des amours d'Angelique et de Medor. Avecques les furies de Rolland, et la mort de Sacripan, le Roy de Circacye : et plusieurs beaux effects contenuës en ladicte tragedie, tiree de la Rioste [sic]. Troyes, Nicolas Oudot, 1614, in-12°, 32 p. Reprinted in 1620 (Arsenal, 8-BL-13863). The Bnf owns an undated edition published in Troyes by Noël Laudereau, RES-YF-4673. The second tragedy is the Tragedie françoise des parfaites amours de Zerbino, et d'Isabella, Princesse fuitive. Ou il est remarqué les perils et grandes fortunes passées par ledit Zerbino, rechercheant son Isabella parle monde ; et comme il est delivré de la mort par Orlando. Troyes, Nicolas Oudot, 1618, in-12°, 40 p. Reprinted in 1621. I have not had access to this text, which is not listed in the catalogs of French public libraries. By Bauter, the Bnf also owns a Rodomontade and une Mort de Roger (Paris, C. Ève, 1605, several copies at the Bnf and Arsenal). 
The argument of Bauter's Angelica et Medoro is very close to the narrative program of Effiat's cycle. Act I recounts the rescue of Medoro by Angelica and the Shepherd. In Act II, the Shepherd is with Angelica and Medoro, witnessing their lovemaking. The lovers leave for the Catay, and Sacripan arrives (the temporal reduction and integration is therefore imperfect). In Act III, the Shepherd tells Orlando about Angelica and Medoro's meeting and their love affair. In Act IV, the Shepherd witnesses Orlando's madness. Act V confronts Sacripant with the messenger, who has just escaped Orlando's fury. The messenger informs Sacripant of Angelica and Medoro's love affair: Sacripant perishes from grief. In the Effiat cycle, Sacripant's death (which is not in Ariosto) is replaced by Zerbino's death. The concern to normalize the diegesis seems to be the same  the aim is to balance the figure of the mad knight, Orlando, with that of a knight who embodies and respects the values of chivalry.

[37]  In Ariosto's story, Isabella is then joined by Fleur-de-lis, who is searching for her lover Brandimart. The painter simplifies and removes this character, who was depicted in the large in-4° engravings in the Valgrisi and Franceschi editions and is also seen in the tapestry after Karel van Mander woven in Spiering's Delft workshop between 1605 and 1614 (Utpictura18, notice B7215).

[38]  By the time Ariosto composed the Orlando furioso, the Ottoman Empire was at its peak  in 1521, Suleiman I took Belgrade, Rhodes in 1522, Buda and Hungary in 1526, and the entire Balkans in 1527. The siege of Vienna in 1529 represents the maximum Ottoman advance into Europe. The last version of the Orlando furioso, in which Ariosto incorporates a battle of Belgrade (song XLIV), appeared in 1532.

[39]  Zerbino che i languidi occhi ha in lei conversi, / sente più doglia, ch'ella si querele, / che de la passïon tenace e forte / che l'ha condutto omai vicino a morte. (XXIX, 77)

[40]  Di ciò, cor mio, nessun timor vi tocchi ; / ch'io vo' seguirvi o in cielo o ne lo 'nfero. / Convien che l'uno e l'altro spirto scocchi, / insieme vada, insieme stia in eterno. (XXIX, 81. Zerbino's speech continues until str. 84  he dies at str. 85.)

[41]  On the French reception of the Ariote, see Alexandre Cioranescu, L'Arioste en France. Des origines à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, éditions des presses modernes, 1939 and L'Arioste et le Tasse en France au XVIe siècle, ed. Rosanne Gorris-Camos, Cahiers V. L. Saulnier, n°20, Editions Rue d'Ulm, Paris, 2003, notably Jean Balsamo's article, " L'Arioste et le Tasse. Des poètes italiens, leurs libraires et leurs lecteurs français ", p. 11-26, and that of Jean Vignes, " Traductions et imitations françaises de l'Orlando furioso (1544-1580) ", p. 75-98.