Frederic George Stephens - The Proposal (The Marquis and Griselda)
Summary
This is a scene from The Clerk's Tale, one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales. The marquis of Saluzzo has fallen in love with a poor but beautiful peasant girl, Griselda, and is proposing marriage to her. He goes on to subject her to a series of appalling trials to test her love. But Griselda is patient and eventually wins his devotion.
The background of this picture was painted from life in the kitchen of the rural lodgings that Stephens shared with his friends Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, at Knole in Kent.
Tags
Date
1850
Source
Tate Britain
Copyright info
public domain