The Story of Nastagio Degli Onesti, part one

A heartbroken young man wanders a pine wood by the sea, and suddenly a half-naked woman runs past, chased by a knight in golden armour and his dogs. Botticelli opens a wedding gift with a nightmare.

The story behind the painting

This tempera panel, about 83 by 138 cm and dated 1483, is the first of four pictures commissioned for the marriage in 1483 of Giannozzo Pucci and Lucrezia di Piero Bini. They tell the story of Nastagio degli Onesti, a nobleman of Ravenna, from the eighth tale of the fifth day of Boccaccio's Decameron. Nastagio loves the daughter of Paolo Traversari, but she rejects him. The theme was chosen for its happy ending: the young woman changes her mind after seeing the hellish punishment of another woman guilty of the same ingratitude toward her lover. In this first episode, Nastagio has left the city in disappointment and roams alone.

What to look for

The painting tells several moments at once, so Nastagio, in red hose, appears three times. On the left, among tents, his friends advise him to leave town for a while. Then we see him close up, wandering sorrowfully through the forest. Nearby he appears again with a stick, trying to drive off the dogs that bite a half-naked woman, chased by a dashing knight with a sword and golden armour. Look at the tall, upright tree trunks: together with the horizontal band of sea behind them they form a kind of grid, which gives a remarkable sense of depth to the pine wood around Ravenna.

Meaning and intent

Showing successive scenes inside one picture, with the same hero repeated, is a typically late medieval way of telling a story, and it gives the panel a strong narrative pull. The drama is real, yet it is held in check by the elegance of slender figures and the graceful gestures of people and animals. The result, in the words of the source, is a magical suspension between fable and reality. For a wedding, the choice is pointed: a tale warning against a cruel refusal of love, which ends in marriage, set before a newly married couple.

Legacy

The four panels were kept in the Palazzo Pucci in Florence until 1868, when they were sold. The first three, including this one, are now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The last one is back in its original location after spending some time in the Watney Collection at Charlbury, in Oxfordshire, England. Although Botticelli conceived all four pictures, the execution was entrusted in part to his assistants, in particular Bartolomeo di Giovanni for the first three and Jacopo da Sellaio for the fourth. This opening panel sets the tone for the series: a forest, a sea, and a love story about to turn strange.