Gualdrada Berti Marrying Count Guido Guerra

From the Getty Museum record

Depicted standing outside a church portal with a priest between them, a young Florentine couple exchanges marriage vows. One of the few Christian women catalogued in *Concerning Famous and Noble Women* by its author Boccaccio, Gualdrada Berti lived in twelfth-century Florence. During a feast day celebration, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV (1175–1218) spied her beauty and expressed his admiration to her father, who quickly offered his daughter to the ruler for a kiss. Affronted by her father’s willingness to compromise her chastity, Gualdrada declared she would only kiss the man she would marry. Impressed by the maiden’s virtue and forthrightness, the emperor offered Gualdrada an ample dowry to marry a nobleman named Guido Guerra. They married right away.