Griselda

Leslie's Griselda depicts the paradigmatic patient wife from Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Clerk's Tale — the peasant woman subjected to increasingly cruel tests of her obedience and fidelity by her aristocratic husband, who ultimately rewards her steadfastness. The Griselda story had a complex cultural history, read sometimes as an admirable model of female virtue and sometimes as a disturbing account of sadistic domination. Victorian painting's engagement with the subject reflected the period's ambivalent attitudes toward feminine submission and the limits of wifely obedience. Leslie's treatment, characteristically sympathetic to feminine suffering, captures Griselda's dignity under trial.

The figure of Griselda is rendered with dignified simplicity, her expression conveying patience and inner strength. The medieval costume and setting are painted with careful historical attention.