Predating the lush garden scenes of Rococo paintings, Jan Soens' Rinaldo and Armida in the Enchanted Garden, was painted during the late Renaissance. His subjects are from a 16th century epic poem. Rinaldo is a part of the Christian crusade to capture Jerusalem from Muslim rule. The sorceress Armida, who gazes at her own reflection, disarms him with her beauty. However, the use of beauty to charm a man was deemed immoral on the part of the woman. Thus Rinaldo's contemporaries, hidden in the distance, have come to free him.

In 1581, the Italian poet Tarquinato Tasso published Gerusaleme Liberata (Jerusalem Liberated), an instantly popular epic poem based on one of the crusades by Christians to retake the Holy Land. It was written as a romantic fantasy, recounting Satan's efforts to create obstacles for the heroic Christian knights, particularly the noble Rinaldo. The beautiful sorceress Armida enticed Rinaldo to enter the lush garden of her castle. There she keeps him besotted with sensual pleasures. He holds her "crystal mirror" up to her face but declares that her worth and beauty are more perfectly "painted in my heart." The episode is treated by Soens as a tender moment, but in the poem it is clear that Rinaldo, "drunk with ease," has ...