One of the most popular episodes — frequently depicted — from Ariosto’s epic, Orlando Furioso (first full edition published 1532), shows the lovers Angelica and Medoro carving their names on a tree (and sometimes suggested as the source of Shakespeare’s Orlando carving his beloved Rosalind’s name on every tree in the Forest of Arden). It is coming across the lovers’ names carved on the tree-trunk in the forest that makes Orlando, furioso — discovering that the woman he is in love with is evidently in love with another, drives him, literally, mad.

As early as c.1570, this engraving by Giorgio Ghisi shows Medoro carving the lovers’ names on a tree trunk, with Cupid holding a flaming torch beside them. In the albums, I am aware of two such miniatures, the earlier dated 1623:

The above sketch is signed by the artist Gabriel Weyer (1576-1632), who styles himself maller im Nurmberg [painter in Nurnberg], and dated 1623, but, according to the Repertorium Alborum Amicorum, the drawing comes from the album of Bonaventura Schor, into which it was inserted in 1641.

Here is another contemporary version of the scene in which both lovers are carving their names separately, painted by Jacques Blanchard in 1630:

But the miniature which prompted me to make this post in the first place, was this one, painted in the album of Georg Truefer, and sold at auction only last year:

And here is a close-up of their tree-carving:

In fact, the couplet they inscribe on the tree is from stanza 36 of Canto XIX of Orlando Furioso:

Angelica e Medoro in uarii modi Angelica and Medoro in different ways

Legati insieme di diuersi nodi tied together with various knots.