Saracen Cavalryman

<p>"Saracen" had come to mean "Muslim" by the twelfth century, and such figures often were depicted with black skin and wearing a turban. Sixteenth-century Italian epic poems—such as Ludovico Ariosto’s (1474–1533)<em> Orlando Furioso</em> (Mad Orlando, 1516) and Torquato Tasso's (1544–1595) <em>Gerusalemme liberata</em> (Jerusalem Delivered, 1580)—romanticized the Saracens in combat with Christian armies. This literary fiction exerted wide influence well into the nineteenth century, casting Saracens as foreigners, much in the same way that Amazons had earlier been perceived. </p>