Griselda's first Trial of Patience, from The Canterbury Tales

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Griselda's first Trial of Patience, from The Canterbury Tales
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This painting entitled 'Griselda's first Trial of Patience' is based on a scene taken from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: the Tale of the Clerk of Oxford. Derived by Chaucer from Petrarch (who based himself on Boccaccio's Decameron), the story of Griselda is in fact in origin an almost universal folk-tale, which reappears in different forms in many cultures.

Griselda, in this version, was a simple maiden who caught the eye of the Marquess Walter of Saluzzo in Italy. He marries her, and they have a baby daughter. But he becomes obsessed with the need to be sure of her perfect love and wifely submission, and he sets her a series of - to our eyes - impossibly cruel tests. In a refinement of cruelty, he spies on her from a dark window.

He sends to her a rough and brutal servant, one whom she knows he uses for his dirty work. He quickly explains his mission:

'This child I am commanded for to take' -
And spake no more, but out the child he hente
Despiteously, and gave a look to make
As though he would have slain it ere he wente.
Griselda must all suffer, all consent,
And as a lamb she sitteth meek and still,
And let the cruel sergeant do his will.
- Chaucer

The painter of this fresco was Charles West Cope: it was his first commission at the Palace of Westminster, and he was to go on to complete more pictures there than any other artist - notably the series in the Peers' Corridor. He completed Griselda in 1848.

(2) Griselda's first Trial of Patience, from The Canterbury Tales

(3) Griselda's first Trial of Patience, from The Canterbury Tales

(4) Griselda's first Trial of Patience, from The Canterbury Tales

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