I thought you might like an 18th-century painting for a change, so I found this --'Sigismonda and the Heart of Guiscardo' by the British painter Moses Haughton (1734-1804). Needless to say I had to find out a bit about the subject matter and here is what I found on Sigismonda in the Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature:
In Boccaccio's Decameron (iv. i), daughter of Tancred, prince of Salerno. Her father, having discovered her love for his squire Guiscardo, slew the latter and sent his heart in a golden cup to Sigismonda, who took poison and died. The father, repenting his cruelty, caused the pair to be buried in the same tomb.
So that rather nice little lidded golden vase, we have to assume, contains the poor man's heart. Very sad. But Haughton has made her into such a pretty 18th-century lady that the whole thing seems miles from the original story. William Hogarth painted a much more famous version of the same subject but without the letter, probably a much better and certainly a more tragic painting but we like women to be reading.