Some of the hundred individual stories told by Boccaccio in his Decameron only attained fame much later. A good example is the tragic tale of Lisabetta related by Filomena on the fourth day, when it was the fifth of those whose love ended unhappily.

In 1818, the British poet John Keats (1795-1821) wrote his version, titled Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, which wasn’t published until shortly after the poet’s untimely death at the age of just twenty-five. It became one of Keats’ most popular works in the nineteenth century. Here I tell Boccaccio’s original version complete with its names, mindful that Keats called his leading lady Isabella rather than Lisabetta, although her lover’s name is Lorenzo according to both authors.

Following the death of a rich merchant of Messina, his three sons inherited his riches, and Lisabetta their sister remained unmarried despite her beauty and grace. She fell in love with Lorenzo, a Pisan who directed operations in one of the brothers’ trading establishments, and their relationship was consummated. The couple had tried keeping their affair secret, but one night she was observed by one of her brothers making her way to Lorenzo’s bedroom; Lisabetta remained unaware of this discovery. Her brother was distressed by this, but decided to keep quiet, and discuss it with his brothers next morning.

The following day, the brothers decided that they would also keep quiet until the opportunity arose to end their sister’s relationship. One day they pretended that they were going to the country for pleasure, and took Lorenzo with them. When they reached an isolated location, the three murdered him, buried his body, then told their sister that they had sent him away on a trading mission.

Lisabetta was anxious for her lover’s return, and persistently asked her brothers for news of him. Eventually, one of them rebuked her for this nagging, so she stopped mentioning him altogether. But each night she kept repeating his name and pining for him. One night, having finally fallen asleep in her tears, she saw him in a dream, when he told her that her brothers had murdered him, and where they had buried his body.

In her grief, Lisabetta obtained the permission of her brothers to go to the country for pleasure. Once she had located where she thought Lorenzo was buried, she quickly found his corpse, which remarkably showed no signs of decay. As she couldn’t move his whole body for more appropriate burial, she cut off his head and hid it in a towel.

When she returned home, Lisabetta cried greatly over Lorenzo’s head, washing it with her tears, then wrapped it in cloth and put it in a large pot. She covered it with soil and in that planted some sprigs of basil. These she watered daily with her tears, as she sat constantly beside the pot in between bouts of crying over it. As a result, the basil grew strong and lush, and richly fragrant.

William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil from 1867 is intricately detailed, with several references to elements of the story, such as the relief of a skull on the side of the pot, a red rose on a tray by Lisabetta’s left foot, and a silver watering can at the bottom right. Behind her is the image of a bedroom, possibly showing Lorenzo coming to her in a flashback to their affair.

Joseph Severn’s Isabella, or the Pot of Basil from 1877 appears remarkably high in chroma, and shows Lisabetta fondly embracing the pot and crying over the basil. Severn had been a personal friend of John Keats, and painted this just a couple of years before his own death.

Edward Reginald Frampton’s Isabella, or the Pot of Basil was probably painted towards the end of the nineteenth century, or possibly in the early twentieth. Lisabetta is kneeling before her pot of basil at an altar, with a crucifix behind.

Ricciardo Meacci’s watercolour of Isabella and the Pot of Basil from 1890 shows Lisabetta embracing her pot of basil, as her three brothers watch with growing anger at her behaviour.

Lisabetta’s brothers began to suspect something, so had the pot removed from her room. This caused their sister deeper grief, and she kept asking after the pot.

John Melhuish Strudwick’s Isabella from about 1886 shows Lisabetta staring in grief at the stand where her pot of basil had stood. Through the window, two of her brothers are seen making off with the pot, looking back at her.

The brothers examined its contents and discovered Lorenzo’s head. Scared that his murder might cause problems for them, they reburied the head, wound up their business, and left Messina for Naples. Lisabetta’s grief only grew deeper, and destroyed her health completely. Still asking for her pot of basil, she finally cried herself to death.

Although the brothers had done everything to keep these events secret, eventually they became widely known, and were celebrated in folk verse.

The first and still greatest depiction of Keats’ retelling is John Everett Millais’ Isabella (Lorenzo and Isabella) from 1848-49, completed before he was twenty, and one of the earliest examples of Pre-Raphaelite art. This is a composite of different references to Keats’ poem and Boccaccio’s story, set at an imaginary family meal the three brothers, Lisabetta and Lorenzo are taking together.

Lorenzo is sharing a blood orange with Lisabetta, white roses and passion flowers climbing from behind their heads. The dog, acting as a surrogate for Lorenzo, is being petted by Lisabetta, but one of her brothers aims a kick at it. Various other symbols are shown of the plot to kill Lorenzo: a brother staring at a glass of red wine, spilt salt on the table, and a hawk pecking at a white feather. The pot of basil is already on the balcony, awaiting Lorenzo’s head.

As far as I can tell, not one major artist had depicted Boccaccio’s story until Keats’ poem had been published nearly half a millennium later.

In the 650 years since Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron started to sweep across Europe, this collection of a hundred short stories has proved one of the most enduring works of literature. I have already given an account of its more painted passages, but this weekend I look in detail at two of them: today that of Cimon and Iphigenia, as told by Panfilo on the fifth day, and tomorrow the tragic tale of Lisabetta related by Filomena on the fourth.

Boccaccio was born in or near Florence in Italy in 1313. He became a scholar and writer based mainly in Florence, and might have been there when it was struck by the Black Death in 1348. The Decameron’s framing story describes that catastrophe, and how a group of seven young women were taking shelter in one of the city’s great churches. They fled as a group to the country nearby, in the company of some servants and three young men. Once settled in an abandoned mansion, the ten decided that one of the means they would use to pass their self-imposed exile was by telling one another stories. Over the next two weeks, each told one story every weekday, delivering the total of a hundred.

For the fifth day of these stories, Fiammetta chose the theme of the adventures of lovers who survived calamities or misfortunes and reached a state of happiness. The first of these is the story of Cimon (or Cymon) and Iphigenia told by Panfilo, which has probably been painted more than any other story in the whole of the Decameron, by masters from Rubens to Frederic, Lord Leighton. What’s most unusual is that every one of those paintings shows a single scene from the second page of a story that runs on for another ten pages, and develops a very different plot.

Cimon’s father was a wealthy Cypriot, but Cimon, a nickname given in honour of his apparent simplicity and uncouthness, was his problem child. He was exceedingly handsome and had a fine physique, but behaved as a complete imbecile. He appeared unable to learn anything, even basic manners, so was sent to live with the farm-workers on his father’s large estates.

One afternoon in May, Cimon was out walking when he reached a fountain in a clearing surrounded by tall trees. Lying asleep on the grass by that fountain was a beautiful young woman, Iphigenia, wearing a flimsy dress that left nothing to the imagination. Sleeping by her were her attendants, two women and a man. Cimon was immediately enraptured, leaned on his stick, and stared at her. As he did so, his simple mind started to change.

As with many of Boccaccio’s stories, this is shown on a wedding cassone, here from about 1525. It’s relatively simple: there’s no sign of Iphigenia’s attendants, but there is a second image of Cimon walking along a path at the far right.

In about 1617, Peter Paul Rubens joined talents with Frans Snyders (who painted the still life with monkeys at the lower right) and Jan Wildens (for its landscape background) in their marvellous Cymon and Iphigenia. This is accurate in its details too, with the correct quota of attendants, and a splendid fountain at the left. Cimon really does look like Boccaccio’s uncouth simpleton.

Willem Van Mieris’ Cymon and Iphigenia from 1698 treats the scene more in the vein of Poussin or Claude, again remaining true to Boccaccio’s details.

Benjamin West was more coy in both his depictions of this scene. His earlier Cymon and Iphigenia from about 1766 (above) was well-received at the time. Six years later, in 1773, he reversed the composition, and was even more restrained in the display of flesh, as shown below.

A few years later, in about 1780, Angelica Kauffman painted this delightful tondo of Cymon and Iphigenia, another variation on the same theme. The cultural contrast between the young man and woman isn’t as stark.

When he was only eighteen, John Everett Millais painted what was to be his last work before he embraced Pre-Raphaelite style: Cymon and Iphigenia (1848). This bears less resemblance to Boccaccio’s story, which is to be expected as Millais didn’t use the Decameron as his literary reference, but a later re-telling by the English poet John Dryden, to which this is more faithful.

In 1884, Frederic, Lord Leighton painted what I think remains the most luxuriant and sensuous treatment of this scene. This study shows Leighton confirming his composition and use of colour.

His finished painting, Cymon and Iphigenia from 1884, shows Iphigenia stretched out languidly in her sleep, in the last warm light of the day; behind her the full moon is just starting to rise. Leighton has changed the season to autumn, with the leaves already brown but the days still hot. Cymon stands in shadow on the right, idly scratching his left knee, gazing intently at Iphigenia.

As far as the painters are concerned, that’s it, and you’d presume the couple lived happily ever after. Not according to Boccaccio, though.

When Iphigenia finally awoke, she was surprised to see Cimon there, and recognised him immediately. Cimon insisted on accompanying her to her house, then went to his family home, where he turned a new leaf, and over the period of four years transformed himself into the best-dressed, most cultured and refined young man on Cyprus. Despite this transformation, Cimon was unable to persuade Iphigenia’s father to allow him to marry the young woman, but was told that she was betrothed to a noble on the island of Rhodes. When the time came for her marriage, Cimon took an armed vessel and gave chase to the ship carrying Iphigenia to Rhodes. He boarded her ship and abducted her.

With Iphigenia on board, Cimon headed for the island of Crete, where he and his crew had relatives and friends. But shortly after they had altered course, a storm blew up, so violent that it threatened to sink the ship. Unable to tell where they were heading, they ended up taking shelter off the coast of Rhodes, where they were caught up by the ship from which they had just abducted Iphigenia.

When their vessel ran aground, Cimon and his crew were forced ashore where they were quickly rounded up and thrown into prison, and Iphigenia was returned to her family ready for her wedding. Iphigenia’s fiancé implored the chief magistrate of Rhodes, Lysimachus, to put Cimon to death, but he was held in custody with the rest of his crew. It happened that Lysimachus was deeply in love with a young woman of Rhodes, who was betrothed to Iphigenia’s future brother-in-law. To Lysimachus’ relief, that marriage had been postponed several times, but it was then decided to hold both weddings in the same ceremony.

Lysimachus was aggrieved by this, and decided the only way he could marry the Rhodian woman that he loved was to abduct her. In order to do so, he needed the help of Cimon and his crew, who would undoubtedly be delighted to be able to abduct Iphigenia again. Lysimachus offered Cimon a deal whereby they would together make off with their partners from the scene of the joint wedding, and they agreed to proceed with that.

Two days later, at dusk, as the weddings were just getting under way, Lysimachus, Cimon and his crew entered the house of the two bridegrooms and seized their brides. Unfortunately, the grooms were armed and mounted a determined resistance. Cimon killed Iphigenia’s fiancé with a single blow to the head, and the other woman’s intended husband fell dead following a blow by Lysimachus.

Lysimachus, Cimon, their crew and the two abducted brides then fled to a ship which they sailed to exile in Crete, where the two couples were married, amid great and joyous celebrations. In time, the people of Cyprus and Rhodes forgave them for the violent way they had stolen their brides; Lysimachus and his wife were able to return to Rhodes, and Cimon and Iphigenia returned to live happily ever after on Cyprus.

None of which was even hinted at by those paintings, however wonderful they are.