Orlando rescuing Olympia from a sea-monster. Etching by F. Bartolozzi, 1763, after Lodovico Carracci.

Orlando has thrown an anchor attached to a rope into the mouth of the sea-monster and is pulling it on to land, to the consternation of onlookers. Olympia is chained by her wrists to the rock. "Orlando, an English Christian knight, is coming to the rescue of a maiden by thrusting an anchor into the jaws of an orc. For optimum dramatic effect, the artist has brought together two episodes from the romantic epic work, Orlando furioso (Raging Roland) by the Italian Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533). Olympia, a Dutch princess, abandoned by her faithless husband, Bireno, was captured by pirates and left [tied to a tree] on the island of Ebuda from which Orlando freed her. Angelica, the pagan daughter of the King of Cathay, by whom, incidentally, the love-sick Orlando was driven mad, was chained naked to a rock and sacrificed to a sea monster but rescued by the Saracen warrior, Ruggiero."--National Trust online catalogue entry for the painting