Gualtherius and Griselda

Gualtherius and Griselda from 1772, now in Kenwood House, depicts a scene from Boccaccio's Decameron — the tale of Patient Griselda whose husband Gualtherius tests her faithfulness through a series of apparently cruel trials, including the pretended deaths of her children. The subject of female virtue tested by male authority was central to Kauffmann's artistic interests, and Boccaccio's Griselda story — transmitted through Petrarch and Chaucer to wide European familiarity — provided a secular counterpart to the classical heroines whose virtue under trial she depicted in her history paintings. Kenwood House, the Adam-designed villa on Hampstead Heath now housing the Iveagh Bequest collection, holds this as part of a remarkable collection of British and European painting that includes Rembrandt, Vermeer, and major British portraits. Kauffmann's choice of the Boccaccio subject reflects the literary range that made her one of the most intellectually sophisticated painters in Georgian London, drawing on Italian Renaissance literature to create a narrative painting that combined Neoclassical formal values with the sentimental emotional content that her contemporaries prized. The 1772 painting belongs to the height of her London career.

The literary scene is rendered with Kauffmann's characteristic blend of narrative clarity and emotional sensitivity, using soft color and graceful gesture to convey the moral drama.