Cassone: The Story of Palaemon and Arcites from Boccaccio’s Teseida with a coat-of-arms (front); Putti bearing coat-of-arms (left side); Putti bearing coat-of-arms (right side)

Giovanni dal Ponte's cassone panels illustrating Boccaccio's Teseida were produced for a Florentine wedding, as the coats of arms on the side panels confirm. The Teseida — Boccaccio's chivalric epic about Palamon and Arcite competing for Emilia — was one of the most popular texts for cassone (wedding chest) decoration in Quattrocento Florence because its themes of courtly love, rivalry, and ultimate marriage resonated with the ceremony's context. Dal Ponte was one of the most active cassone painters of his generation, and these panels show his facility with continuous narrative across a long horizontal format.

Dal Ponte narrates multiple episodes from the Teseida in a continuous landscape scroll, setting figures in a shallow space against stylised trees and architecture. The heraldic side panels with putti are painted with a flatter, more decorative treatment than the narrative panels, appropriate to their subsidiary role.