''Veronica Veronese'' is an

oil painting Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...

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 Brother ...

painted in 1872 with

Alexa Wilding Alexa Wilding (born Alice Wilding, c. 1847 – 25 April 1884) was one of the favourite models of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, featuring in some of his finest paintings of the later 1860s and 1870s. She sat for more of h ...

as the model. The painting was conceived as a companion to ''

Lady Lilith ''Lady Lilith'' is an oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti first painted in 1866–1868 using his mistress Fanny Cornforth as the model, then altered in 1872–73 to show the face of Alexa Wilding. The subject is Lilith, who was, according ...

.'' Rossetti sold the painting to one of his best clients, shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland.''Waking Dreams'', p.194. In 1923 it was acquired by the estate of Samuel Bancroft which donated it in 1935 to the

Delaware Art Museum The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the arti ...

Painting

Like much of Rossetti's work of the 1860s and 1870s, ''Veronica Veronese'' was inspired by

Venetian painting Venetian painting was a major force in Italian Renaissance painting and beyond. Beginning with the work of Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) and his brother Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507) and their workshops, the major artists of the Venetian s ...

. It is believed to represent "the artistic soul in the act of creation". This theme is expounded by the fictitious quote inscribed on the frame of the painting. Though the quote is attributed on the frame to "The Letters of Girolamo Ridolfi," critics believe that

Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays – all tragedies – and collections of poetry such as '' Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the Eleve ...

or Rossetti actually wrote it. The symbolism in the painting includes the uncaged bird, which may represent "the marriage of the voices of nature and the soul" and overt flower symbolism. The

camomile Chamomile (American English) or camomile (British English; see spelling differences) ( or ) is the common name for several plants of the family Asteraceae. Two of the species, ''Matricaria chamomilla'' and ''Chamaemelum nobile'', are commonl ...

in the bird cage may represent "energy in adversity", the primroses youth, and the

daffodil ''Narcissus'' is a genus of predominantly spring flowering perennial plants of the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. Various common names including daffodil,The word "daffodil" is also applied to related genera such as '' Sternbergia'', '' ...

s reflection.

Jane Morris Jane Morris (née Burden; 19 October 1839 – 26 January 1914) was an English embroiderer in the Arts and Crafts movement and an artists' model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to her husband Will ...

lent the green dress in the picture. The violin was part of Rossetti's collection of musical instruments, and the fan also appeared in ''

Monna Vanna ''Monna Vanna'' () is an unfinished opera by Sergei Rachmaninoff after a play by Maurice Maeterlinck. Rachmaninoff had completed Act I in short vocal score, with piano accompaniment, and then he went to ask for permission to set the text in a ful ...

''. The few bars of musical composition on the manuscript may have been borrowed from George Boyce.

Provenance and exhibitions

File:FRLeylandsdrawingroom1892.jpg, Six Rossetti paintings as hung in Leyland's drawing room, 1892. ''Lady Lilith'' hangs at the far right. (Click on any painting for its article.) poly 80 200 25 200 25 280 80 280 Monna Rosa poly 200 190 240 190 240 280 200 280 Mnemosyne (Rossetti) poly 250 190 290 190 290 280 250 280 The Blessed Damozel poly 300 210 330 210 330 280 300 280

Proserpine (Rossetti painting) ''Proserpine'' (also ''Proserpina'' or ''Persephone'') is an oil painting on canvas by English artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted in 1874 and now in Tate Britain. Rossetti began work on the painting in 1871 and painted at least eig ...

poly 352 215 400 215 400 280 352 280 Rosetti-Veronica Veronese

poly 530 220 570 220 570 280 530 280

desc none Leyland bought the painting from Rossetti in 1872 for £840 and it was sold at Leyland's estate sale, held at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

on 28 May 1892. The painting hung in Leyland's drawing room with five other Rossetti paintings that Leyland called "stunners."''Waking Dreams'', p. 26 (figure 5). After Leyland's estate sale, the painting changed hands three times until it was bought by Charles Fairfax Murray, another Pre-Raphaelite artist. Murray's son, John Edward Murray, sold it to the estate of Samuel Bancroft in 1923. Bancroft and his estate accumulated one of the largest collections of

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), 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, ...

art outside of the United Kingdom and donated the collection in 1935 to the

. The painting was exhibited in London in 1883, and in Washington, D.C. (1977),

Richmond, Virginia Richmond ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city (United States), independent city since 1871. ...

(1982), London (1997), and

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

and Williamstown (2000).

Painting

Provenance and exhibitions

See also

References

Sources

Further reading