The Story of Nastagio Degli Onesti, part three

This third panel of the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti at the Museo del Prado continues Boccaccio's narrative with Nastagio's plan: he invites the cruel Signora Traversari and her family to a banquet in the forest where he knows the ghost hunt will appear. The shock of witnessing the phantom punishment—the knight kills and disembowels the fleeing woman whose heart he feeds to his dogs, eternally reenacted—is designed to persuade Nastagio's beloved to reconsider her refusal of his love. Botticelli renders the third panel with characteristic narrative clarity, the forest setting appropriate to both supernatural encounter and psychological revelation. The Prado's three-panel holding allows study of Botticelli's narrative sequence as its original function demanded.

The forest setting is rendered with Botticelli's precise, decorative approach to landscape, the dramatic action of the ghostly pursuit depicted with the narrative clarity and linear elegance that characterized his storia paintings.