These panels were painted for the occasion of the wedding
of the godson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Gianozzo Pucci
to Lucrezia Bini. The panels tell a story from Bocaccio's
Decameron, 5th tale of the 9th day.
In the first panel we meet Onesti, strolling through
the forest, upset because his fiancé has refused
to marry him. His despair is driving him crazy and he
wants to be alone, but his solitude is disturbed by the
sound of galloping hooves. Suddenly a naked woman appears
before him, she is chased by a pack of dogs. The sounds
of the hooves have come from a knight in armour who is
riding hard at the woman and brandishing his sword. Despite
such intensity of action in the foreground of the painting,
the background and surrounding landscape are perfectly
peaceful.
In the second panel the woman is caught by the dogs and
wouded by the sword, she has fallen to the ground. The
knight has dismounted and is cutting open her back to
take her heart and feed it to his dogs. Onesti is horrified
(look at his face and the way he turns aside) Then a surprising
thing happens, even before the dogs have finished eating
the heart, the woman gets to her feet again and runs away,
the dogs and horses again in pursuit. Onesti has witnessed
a curse! The woman has to run and the man will kill her
until the end of time, over and over again. Why? Because
the man was in love with her and she rejected him, so
now he will perpetually steal her heart and feed it to
his animals.
The third panel shows the brilliant idea this has given
Onesti! He is a jilted lover as well! What better way
to get his girl back than to invite her family to a banquet
in the forest where he has seen this gruesome curse? The
family duely arrive for the banquet and are horrified
by the scene that plays out before them. Once again the
foreground is chaos, but the background is complete serenity.
The fourth panel shows the result of Onesti's plan ...
not wanting to suffer the same fate as the phantom girl,
Onesti's fiancé changes her mind and they marry.
We are guests at the wedding, marrying the theme of the
work nicely with the occasion for which it was painted.
