ナスタージョ・デリ・オネスティの物語、第四部

This is the happy ending of a grim story. In Boccaccio's tale a spurned lover walks a haunted pine wood where a phantom knight hunts down and kills a cruel woman week after week, and after making the lady who refused him watch the sight, she agrees at last to marry him. Botticelli and his workshop painted the four panels in 1483 for a real Florentine wedding, the marriage of Giannozzo Pucci to Lucrezia Bini, a match the Medici had helped arrange. This final scene is the banquet that seals it, the men and women seated in orderly rows. Along the loggia hang the coats of arms of the three families, Pucci, Bini and Medici, painted right into the celebration they were paying for.