The painter makes no attempt at archæological reconstruction; he gives us a picture of the costumes of his own day. This vivacious picture is a fresco transferred to canvas. It was painted in the Pandolfo Petrucci Palace at Siena, which also Signorelli's "Triumph of Chastity" once decorated (now 910 in our Gallery).
912, 913, 914. THE STORY OF GRISELDA.
Umbrian School: 15th-16th century.
On these three panels (formerly ascribed to Pinturicchio),[195] which were probably destined to serve as decorations to a chest, the story of Griselda is told with much naïve awkwardness of drawing, but also with much naïve playfulness of incident. The story, told in Boccaccio's Decameron, and by Petrarch, is also to be found in Chaucer's Clerkes Tale.
In the first picture (912) we see (1) on the extreme left the Marquis of Saluzzo, who is out hunting with a great retinue. He meets Griselda, a peasant girl, who is drawing water at the well, and falls in love with her. Next (2) on the extreme right is her humble barn-like dwelling, with the marquis serenading his love from below. (3) He carries her off with him; and note how Griselda, who is to be modest and humble to the end, hangs her head in "maiden shamefacedness." (4) Then the marquis has her attired in gold and fine linen, fit for a prince's bride. Her pattens and perhaps her garters are lying discarded beside her. And so (5), in the centre of the picture, all is ready for the wedding:
This markis hath hir spoused with a ring
Brought for the same cause, and then hir sette
Upon an hors, snow-whyt and wel ambling.
Before the second act (913) a few years are supposed to have elapsed. (1) On the left Griselda's two children—a boy and a girl—(in the likeness of two very wooden dolls) are being carried off, as if by a villain in a transpontine tragedy. They are supposed to have since died miserably. (2) The marquis tires of his love for Griselda, and is divorced: in the centre of the picture we see her giving back the wedding ring. (3) Then she is stripped of her fine clothes, and (4) sent away to her father's house, but
"The smok," quod he, "that thou hast on thy bak,
Lat it be stille, and ber it forth with thee."
Two young gallants, in absurd attitudes, look on in half-pitying amusement, while nearer to us two serving-men are disgusted at the cruel shame. (5) On the extreme right she is at home again, tending, as before, her father's sheep.