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The present painting reproduces a landscape composition by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) in the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples. (Donald Posner, Annibale Carracci. A study in the reform of Italian painting around 1590, London 1971, p. 58, no. 132). The compositional scheme of the two lovers is reminiscent of "Venus and Adonis" depictions (Donald Posner refers to Bernard Salomon's series of woodcuts on Ovid's Metamorphoses of 1557, Médiathèque Émile-Zola, Montpellier, inv. no. C189). Sometimes described in literature as the last great painter of the Bolognese school, Carlo Cignani studied the works of his great predecessors intensively. The Carracci family of painters, who had a decisive impact on his work, was particularly influential for him.
The literary basis for this painting is Torquato Tasso's epic "Gerusalemme liberata", set at the time of the Crusades. The young knight Rinaldo is the greatest of the Christian knights who, during a crusade, finds himself in the realm of the sorceress Armida. She wants to kill him, but instead she falls in love with him and whisks him away to a magical island, where he too returns her feelings and forgets the crusade in the frenzy of love. Eventually, Rinaldo's companions track down the couple and free him from his spell. By giving him a diamond mirror, they force him to see himself in his effeminate and amorous state and leave the deeply offended Armida to return to the war.