Tintoretto, The Rescue of Princess Arsinoe, 1555-1556

A knight in shining armor with nude damsel wrapped in his arms. Had I been the artist, I would have titled this painting something along those lines. But no, Tintoretto had to go and makes things complicated for me. Thus he called this piece The Rescue of Princess Arsinoe. I will give him credit and say this name reads better, but who is Princess Arsinoe? I have no idea. So Tintoretto has made my job all the more harder.

By this point, any reader would be thinking, “Why doesn’t this kid just Google Princess Arsinoe?” Well I did, and she’s not really an Internet celebrity. The articles on this painting gave no inkling as to who she was. The artsy-fartsy scholars merely spoke of composition and color, ignoring the naked lady in the knight’s arms. I assume they also had no idea, so they began to pompously dance around the topic.

A list of Egyptian royal family members named Arsinoe was the most promising piece of evidence my initial search gave me. Sadly, Tintoretto’s piece doesn’t look like it takes place in Egypt. So I threw that out, but came back to it after I realized no story concerning a medieval Arsinoe existed. Hours and hours (20 minutes) of research followed and allowed me to realize Arsinoe was Cleopatra’s youngest half-sister. Arsinoe opposed Roman rule over Egypt, thus she was promptly imprisoned. Then she was rescued (by unspecified means) and led a rebellion. Eventually, she was captured again and then executed once Cleopatra lost influence in Rome.

I then discovered through the reading of a particularly pompous article that Tintoretto decided to transport the location of the scene from Egypt to Venice just because. The location had thrown me off for so long and to have it not even matter to Tintoretto stung. That’s why I am writing this blog post around 12:30 at night (it is due the next morning). I could have had this thing done days ago if I had known that. But what can you do? Yes, you can cry. You can curse. You could even punch a hole in the wall. In my case, I am doing none of these things. Life happens, and we have to deal with all the unnecessary crap that comes with it. All told, a late night spent with a beautiful painting does not sound too bad. Take these moments, learn from them.

I could have talked about the chains imprisoning the naked ladies, the movement of the boat out to sea and the freedom it represents, the stark vertical divide, or why Romans keep their female prisoners naked, but I didn’t. Instead I wrote you this note. So read it carefully and learn from the moment.