Original heliogravure from "Contes de Boccace", as interpreted by Marc Chagall.
A Femme Avare, Galant Escroc -A Miserly Woman, a Galant Swindler
A German soldier who served in Milan was in love with the wife of a rich merchant in the city. The woman agreed to meet him when her husband was away in Genopam on condition tyhat he paid her 200 crowns. The soldier borrowed the money from the lady's husband, and on giving it to her she agreed to share her bed with him.
On the return of the husband, the soldier went to the house when they were both in and informed the husband that the money he had borrowed from him was no longer needed, so he had returned it to his wife the day after he had left for Genoa. The lady was obliged to hand over the 200 crowns to her husband, blaming her poor memory for not giving it to him immediately on his return.
This, the soldier was happy, having punished the woman for her greed and infidelity, and having enjoyed her sexual favours at no expense to himself.
This original heliograph is from Marc Chagall's wonderful graphic interpretation of Boccacio's "Decameron", inspired by an original coloured medieval illustration taken from an original manuscript in the library of the Duke of Burgundy of the same scene.
Featured in Verve Magazine Number 24 and published in 1950.
Marc Chagall (1887- 1985) was born Moishe Shagal near the city of Vitebsk, Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family. Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society. Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and prayer. In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style where he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art. In 1914 he returned to Russia during which time he worked as a stage designer and art teacher, before returning to Paris in 1922.Marc Chagall’s dreamlike compositions depict aspects of the artist’s personal and family histories, and those of Eastern European folklore at large. Flying figures, elements of Jewish tradition, peasant life, and animals are frequent motifs. Chagall’s practice—which spanned painting, printmaking, books, ceramics, and stained glass—was immensely influential in the development of 20th-century art: His supernatural subjects and emotional gestures bridged the work of earlier avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Symbolism with later modernist styles such as Surrealism. Chagall’s career was disrupted by the World Wars, and while the artist moved between Russia, France, and the United States, he managed to exhibit widely during his lifetime both within the continent and in the U.S. His work belongs in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Chagall also produced stained-glass windows for Hadassah University Medical Center’s Abbell Synagogue in Jerusalem, the Saint-Étienne Cathedral in Metz, the United Nations building in New York City, and the St. Stephen church in Mainz, Germany.
