In the last act (914), a grand banquet is prepared for the marquis's second wedding, and Griselda is sent for to the castle to do menial work. On the left we see her sweeping; on the right she is waiting at table. Then, on the left again, it is discovered that the marquis's new bride is none other than Griselda's long-lost daughter, accompanied by her brother. They had all the while been tended in a distant city with the utmost care. Griselda is thereupon affectionately embraced by her husband, publicly reinstated in her proper position, and presented to all the court as a model of wifely obedience and patience—
No wedded man so hardy be tassaille
His wyues pacience, in hope to fynde
Grisildes, for in certein he shal faille!
O noble wyues, ful of heigh prudènce,
Lat non humilitee your tongë naille.
915. MARS AND VENUS.
Botticelli (Florentine: 1447-1510). See 1034.
So the picture is usually called—Mars, the God of War, asleep, and the young satyrs playing with his discarded armour, while one of them attempts to rouse him by blowing a shell. The subject is almost identical with that which Spenser draws in the Faërie Queene, where Sir Guyon, the Knight of Purity, overthrows the Bower of Bliss in which Acrasia (or Pleasure) dwells—the last and worst of Sir Guyon's trials, for "it is harder to fight against pleasure than against pain." Note especially the expression of the sleeping youth: he is overcome with brutish paralysis, and they cannot awaken him. Note also the swarm of hornets issuing from the tree-trunk by his head—significant of the power that sensual indulgence has of venomously wounding. Visitors who have been in Venice may remember similar details in Carpaccio's picture of St. George and the Dragon (J. R. Anderson in St. Mark's Rest, Second Supplement, p. 20).
Upon a bed of Roses she was layd,
As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin;
And was arrayd, or rather disarrayd,
All in a vele of silke and silver thin,
That hid no whit her alabaster skin ...
The young man, sleeping by her, seemd to be
Some goodly swayne of honorable place,
That certes it great pitty was to see
Him his nobility so fowle deface ...
His warlike armes, the ydle instruments
Of sleeping praise, were hong upon a tree ...
Ne for them ne for honour cared hee,
Ne ought that did to his advauncement tend;
But in lewd loves, and wastfull luxuree,
His dayes, his goods, his bodie, he did spend:
O horrible enchantment, that him so did blend!
Faërie Queene, bk. ii. 12, §§ lxxvii.-lxxx.
It has been suggested by Dr. Richter that the subject of the picture is not mythological, but an illustration of Angelo Poliziano's poem, "Stanze per la Giostra," "The Song of the Tournament," written in 1476 in glorification of Giuliano de' Medici, who had entered the lists in the preceding year, at the tournament given in honour of Simonetta Cattaneo. In this poem, Giuliano appears as a youth enamoured of the chase, and contemptuous of women. Cupid determines that he shall fall a prey to a pair of lovely eyes, and leads him to the presence of Simonetta. But night falls and Simonetta vanishes, whereupon Venus sends Giuliano a dream in which he is exhorted to enter the lists in honour of his lady-love. He foreknows that victory will crown his arms, and that love will reward his valour, but these joyful tidings are black with the shadow of death, for early in 1476 Simonetta died. According to Dr. Richter's interpretation, Giuliano in the picture before us lies sunk in deepest sleep. The little satyrs are whispering dreams into his ears, dreams from the realms of Venus. In his dreams, Giuliano is overcome with fear, because his lady is clad in the armour of Pallas: he cannot brook the gleam of her helmet and her lance. But Cupid whispers: "Lift thine eyes, Giuliano, to that flame which with its radiance blinds thee like a sun; for she it is who quickens noble minds, and from the breast all evil thoughts expels." He dreams again; a goddess comes to his aid leading him to battle and to victory. She divests his lady of the armour of Pallas, and leaves her robed in white (Lectures on the National Gallery, p. 51). The poem[196] may thus be made to fit the picture. It may, however, be questioned whether the action of the little Cupids is not more appropriate to the accepted theory which sees in the armour the discarded weapons of a Mars or a knight, and Count Plunkett (Sandro Botticelli, pp. 44-5) refers to a passage in Lucian, with whose dialogues Botticelli was familiar. In describing a picture by Aëtion of the "Nuptials of Alexander and Roxana," Lucian describes how "on one side of it little Cupids play among Alexander's armour; two are carrying his spear, as porters do a heavy beam; two more grasp the handles of a shield, tugging it along with another reclining on it ... and then another has got into the breastplate.... All this is not idle fancy, on which the painter has been lavishing needless pains; he is hinting that Alexander has also another love, in War."