''A Vision of Fiammetta'' is an

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

created by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoo ...

, in the

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...

style, created in 1878. The painting was one half of one of Rossetti's "double works", accompanying his ''Ballads and Sonnets'' (1881). Maria Spartali Stillman modelled for the painting. The subject of painting is

Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was some ...

's muse named Fiammetta.

Subject

The frame of the painting is inscribed with three texts: the sonnet by

entitled "On his Last Sight of Fiammetta," which inspired the painting; Rossetti's translation of it, and his own poem mirroring the painting:

Behold Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.
Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands;
And as she sways the branches with her hands,
Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer,
In separate petals shed, each like a tear;
While from the quivering bough the bird expands
His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands
Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death drawn near.

All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air:
The angel circling round her aureole
Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole:
While she, with reassuring eyes most fair,
A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere
On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.

Provenance

The painting was originally in the possession of William Alfred Turner (1839-1886), tephen Wildman, ''Waking Dreams : The collection of Samuel Bancroft Junior'', Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, 2004 '' Waking Dreams''. a businessman, director for a time of the Edison Electric Lighting Company, who owned '' Joli cœur'' (1867 Manchester City Art Gallery), '' Water Willow'', a chalk study for '' La Bella Mano'', another one for ''

Mnemosyne In Greek mythology and ancient Greek religion, Mnemosyne (; grc, Μνημοσύνη, ) is the goddess of memory and the mother of the nine Muses by her nephew Zeus. In the Greek tradition, Mnemosyne is one of the Titans, the twelve divine chil ...

'' (1876, and the oil version of '' Proserpine'' (1877 collection privée). Through a sequence of other owners ''A Vision of Fiammetta'' has now found its way into the collection of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber.A Vision of Fiammetta
''Dante Gabriel Rossetti Archive''.

References

1878 paintings Paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Birds in art {{19C-painting-stub