The Liberation of Arsinoe

Egyptian Princess Arsinoe is freed from her prison on Pharos to lead a rebellion against Caesar. Tintoretto moves this scene of the action from Alexandria to a Venetian lagoon and lends satirical elements to this cloak-and-dagger story. A gondola, in which the escape is made, has a carved mask of a satyr at the bows. A noble knight is losing his balance as he indulges in a kiss that might be right out of a movie. Tintoretto has replaced a rope mentioned in a textual source of the story by a rope ladder. As a small cache of weapons in the gondola suggests, the knight has shot an arrow carrying a thin thread in through the prison tower window. This is done so that Arsinoe and her companion could pull up the rope ladder fastened to the thread and escape.