Gaetano Albanese - Rosamund and Alboin

I wasn't familiar with this artist, who has worked as an illustrator for many magazines and books published in Italy between the '50s and '80s, but I instantly liked this piece and, despite it isn't properly comic art (although Albanese has drew even romance comics in his career), I couldn't help but add it to my collection.

And, for all those who are interested in the story behind this illustration, Rosamund was daughter of Cunimund, king of the Gepids, and wife of Alboin, king of the Lombards.
The Gepids fought wars against the Lombards since 546, firstly within the context of a Lombardic-Byzantine alliance, and later against the Lombards and the Turkic Avar nomads. In 567, the Gepid kingdom was completely subdued by a mixture of Lombard and Avar forces. King Cunimund was decapitated and Rosamund, along with many other Gepids, was taken as a prisoner of the Lombards. However, in an attempt to secure a male heir and following the death of his first wife Clotsuinda, king Alboin took Rosamund as his wife. Alboin was noted for his cruelty towards her: his most famous act of cruelty (but here history is mixed with legend) was reported by Paulus Diaconus, who states that, at a royal banquet in Verona, Alboin forced Rosamund to drink from the skull of her father, inviting her "to drink merrily with her father". But a fierce revenge wasn't long in coming...

Of course such an intriguing story has inspired many illustrations and paintings, novels, dramas, comics and even a movie released in Italy in 1961, starring the lovely Eleonora Rossi Drago, as Rosamund, and Jack Palance, as Alboin!

(pen, ink and washed ink on artboard, roughly 10"x 7" - signed)