Thomas Stothard, R.A.

The present lot depicts the account of Cimon and Iphigenia, a love story from book five of Boccaccio's Decameron, as retold by English poet John Dryden. Cimon, the cloaked male figure in the lower left, was of noble birth but was considered coarse and uncultured. Upon discovering Iphigenia in the forest, shown here as the woman sleeping in white in the lower right, Cimon falls in love, and eventually marries her. The power of his love for Iphigenia transforms the rustic Cimon into an elegant and polished gentleman. 

Thomas Stothard exhibited several paintings with subjects related to the Decameron at the Royal Academy over the course of his career. This painting bears numerous points of similarity with the illustration Stothard provided for Dryden's Cymon and Iphigenia in the fourth volume of Harrison's Lady's Poetical Magazine, published between 1781 and 1782.¹

^1. Coxhead 1906, pp. 35-36.