drawing;
print study
- Museum number
- 1909,0820.1
- Description
-
Chaucer's legend of good women; man wearing hooded cloak standing to right beside path in forest, group of women standing distance beside trees
Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1786-1863
- Dimensions
-
Height: 129 millimetres
-
Width: 89 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- This drawing is an illustration to Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century poem ‘The Legend of Good Women’, which retells in lyrical form the tragic love stories of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea, Lucrece, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra. It was one of the longer poems penned by the author prior to the Canterbury Tales.
It takes the form of a dream vision in which the author is visited by Cupid, the god of love, who rebukes him for having produced so many works that contained so little praise for his female characters. To the rescue arrives Alceste, a princess in Greek mythology noteworthy for her unending love and fidelity to her husband Admetus. She suggests a penance on the part of Chaucer, who agrees and composes a series of poems that celebrate the ability of women to reveal a kind of fidelity that will also be found sorely lacking in the many of the men they have loved.
Here, Mulready depicts a man (probably Chaucer) wearing a hooded cloak standing to right beside path in forest, with a group of women standing in the distance beside trees. It was etched by E. Finden; an etching of the subject is kept in the same solander (1862,0524.146).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1909
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1909,0820.1
