The Story of Oenone and Paris (center panel)

Francesco di Giorgio's Story of Oenone and Paris (center panel) forms the central section of a three-panel cassone sequence depicting this melancholy love story from Ovid. Paris's abandonment of the mountain nymph Oenone for Helen of Troy initiated the Trojan War, and the narrative's moral dimensions — faithless love, tragic consequences — gave it humanist relevance as well as narrative interest. Francesco di Giorgio's sophisticated engagement with classical literature in this series of cassone panels demonstrates the learned humanist culture that distinguished Sienese patrician patronage in the late fifteenth century.

Francesco di Giorgio's refined draughtsmanship and delicate landscape setting create a continuous narrative flow, with graceful, attenuated figures characteristic of the Sienese tradition of lyrical storytelling.