Historia de Nastagio degli Onesti, segunda parte

In 1483 Lorenzo de' Medici commissioned four panels from Botticelli as a wedding gift, to be set into the wall of a room for the marriage of Giannozzo Pucci and Lucrezia Bini, two young Florentines from allied families. The subject he chose comes from Boccaccio, and it is a strange thing to give a bride. A rejected suitor stumbles on a ghostly hunt in a pine wood, a phantom knight endlessly running down and killing the woman who once refused him. In this second panel the knight has dismounted, split the woman's back open, and thrown her heart to his dogs, while in the distance the chase begins again. The point of the gruesome loop was a warning that cruelty in love has consequences. A season later the couple were married.