Bradamante

Bradamante
Bradamante valorosa (1597) by Antonio Tempesta
First appearance	Orlando Innamorato
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Knight
Spouse(s)	Ruggiero
Relatives	Rinaldo (brother)
Religion	Christian

Bradamante (occasionally spelled Bradamant) is a fictional knight heroine in two epic poems of the Renaissance: Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. Since the poems exerted a wide influence on later culture, she became a recurring character in Western art.

Bradamante, a female Christian knight, is the sister of Rinaldo and falls in love with a Saracen warrior named Ruggiero, but refuses to marry him unless he converts from Islam. An expert in combat, she wields a magical lance that unhorses anyone it touches, and rescues Ruggiero from being imprisoned by the wizard Atlante.

The two lovers are separated many times in the story, and her parents reject the suitor even after Ruggiero converts to Christianity, preferring a nobleman called Leo. She decides to marry whoever withstands her in combat and Ruggiero overcomes the challenge. At the end, their marriage give rise to the noble House of Este, who were patrons to both Boiardo and Ariosto.

The poems drew from legends of Charlemagne, chansons de geste, and blended recurring motifs found in the Matter of France and the Matter of Britain.

In 1582, French dramatist Robert Garnier wrote a tragicomedy named Bradamante that further develops the love story between the heroine and Roger (Ruggiero).

Several eponymous operas have been written about the heroine:

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