Resumen de Art in the Service of a Holy War: A Call for a Crusade in a Guercino Painting
The writer suggests that a 1620 altarpiece by Guercino, generally thought to show the entry of St William Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine into a monastic order, represents a call for a crusade. He identifies the figure of the knight in the painting as an earlier St William who participated in one of the proto-crusades in 11th-century Europe, and argues that the scene shows not St William receiving the habit but St William receiving the pope's blessing before departing for a crusade.
