Page 86 - SUMMARIES OF GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO’S DECAMEON : A Visionary Journey In 100 Stories And 100 Etchings By Petru Russu

Tancredi and Ghismonda : Love’s Final Vow

In the shadowed halls of Salerno, Prince Tancredi’s love for his daughter
Ghismonda is fierce, but it is a love rooted in possession rather than
understanding. He delays her marriage, and when she returns widowed,

he refuses to remarry her, keeping her cloistered in a life of gilded
isolation. Ghismonda, spirited and intelligent, refuses to let her desires be
dictated by status or paternal control.

She chooses Guiscardo, a man of humble birth but noble soul, as her
secret lover, a quiet rebellion against the rigid social order that binds her.
Their love, hidden beneath the palace in a secret chamber, is tender and
deeply human, a sanctuary from the cold machinery of politics and pride.

But when Tancredi discovers their affair, his reaction is not sorrowful, it is
wrathful, the fury of a man whose authority has been undermined. He has
Guiscardo executed and sends his heart to Ghismonda in a golden goblet,

a grotesque token meant to shame and destroy.

Yet Ghismonda, in a final act of defiance and devotion, pours poison
into the cup and drinks, binding herself to her lover in death. Her

gesture transforms the goblet from a vessel of vengeance into a
chalice of eternal love, a symbol that cruelty cannot extinguish what
was freely and fiercely chosen.

WROUGHT IN ANGUISHED Boccaccio’s tale, steeped in tragedy, becomes a haunting meditation
SYMMETRY AND SORROW-SOAKED
CHROMATICS, THE ARTWORK on the limits of power, the dignity of love, and the quiet strength of a
EMBODIES GRIEF AS RITUAL, woman who refuses to be broken. It is a story where the heart, torn from
WHERE A GOLDEN VESSEL SPILLS a body and sealed in gold, becomes not a weapon of punishment but a
NOT JUST BLOOD, BUT THE
UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF LOVE relic of resistance, and where death is not defeat but the final vow of love
CRUCIFIED BY POWER. unshaken by tyranny.
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