Lot Essay
The picture illustrates a story by Gian Francesco Straparola, a writer of whom little is known except that he was born in Caravaggio and died about 1557. Though credited with an early volume of poetry (1508), his most famous work is Le piacevole notte, a collection of novelle published in Venice 1550-3. In form this closely resembles Boccaccio's earlier and more familiar collection, the Decameron. Boccaccio's stories are told by a group of young men and women who have retreated to Fiesole to escape the plague-ridden city of Florence, Straparola's by a party which has gathered on the island of Murano during the Venetian carnival; they are led by Ottavino Maria Sforza, bishop-elect of Lodi, and include, among other notabilities, Pietro Bembo himself. The originality of the stories lies in the inclusion of many oriental folk tales and the use of animal fables - among them the famous tale of 'Puss in Boots', which Straparola seems to have invented. The stories are often rabelaisian, and many have priests as protagonists. This was considered offensive to Counter-Reformation sensibilities, and the book was placed on the Index in 1624.
The popularity of the stories led to many editions and translations. The first English translation, however, did not appear until 1894, when it was undertaken by the Italian scholar art-historian W.G. Waters. E.R. Hughes provided eighteen illustrations, of which the present watercolour is one. Another, Biancabella and the Serpent (repr. vol. I, facing p. 128), was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1895.
Bertuccio's Bride illustrates the second story told on the eleventh night. The hero is the simple, trusting son of a notary who has inherited money from his father, and the moral is that good deeds are rewarded.
As Rodney Egen has observed in a recent article on Hughes (Water-Colours and Drawings Magazine, Winter 1990, pp. 34-7), the artist was fascinated by obscure subjects from Italian literature. However, even if his sources are unusually esoteric, there are close
parallels with other artists working in the same tradition. Among the older generation, Rossetti was steeped in Dante, who also provided subjects for Watts, Leighton and Burne-Jones; Watts in addition illustrated Boccaccio, Boiado and Ariosto. For Hughes's contemporaries, Boccaccio was the primary source, inspiring a number of watercolours by Marie Stillman, the finest of Byam Shaw's book illustrations (1899), and two important late paintings by J.W. Waterhouse (Port Sunlight)
The popularity of the stories led to many editions and translations. The first English translation, however, did not appear until 1894, when it was undertaken by the Italian scholar art-historian W.G. Waters. E.R. Hughes provided eighteen illustrations, of which the present watercolour is one. Another, Biancabella and the Serpent (repr. vol. I, facing p. 128), was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1895.
Bertuccio's Bride illustrates the second story told on the eleventh night. The hero is the simple, trusting son of a notary who has inherited money from his father, and the moral is that good deeds are rewarded.
As Rodney Egen has observed in a recent article on Hughes (Water-Colours and Drawings Magazine, Winter 1990, pp. 34-7), the artist was fascinated by obscure subjects from Italian literature. However, even if his sources are unusually esoteric, there are close
parallels with other artists working in the same tradition. Among the older generation, Rossetti was steeped in Dante, who also provided subjects for Watts, Leighton and Burne-Jones; Watts in addition illustrated Boccaccio, Boiado and Ariosto. For Hughes's contemporaries, Boccaccio was the primary source, inspiring a number of watercolours by Marie Stillman, the finest of Byam Shaw's book illustrations (1899), and two important late paintings by J.W. Waterhouse (Port Sunlight)