Busacca Gallery

This is a work on paper print, "Sancta LILIAS." by artist D G Rossetti: G.F. Watts, pinxit. Swan Electric Engraving C o. From around the 1920s Figure: Monogram and date upper left corner: "1879." Inscribed on a scroll upper right: "Sancta LILIAS." Three-quarter-length figure of a woman (features of Alexa Wilding) standing, turned to the right; the head with a halo is nearly in profile. In her left hand she holds up a lily stem. Head finished in red chalk, the rest of the figure sketched. Surtees,of the two shows that it would have been identical, and that it is in fact simply an unfinished replica, though a fine one so far as it goes. The other items of 1879 are a crayon replica with variations of Pandora , in the possession of Mr. Watts-Dunton, already described and reproduced; the large Leyland replica of The Blessed Damozel , in the possession of the Hon. Mrs. O'Brien, also reproduced already; and a very popular crayon study known as Sancta Lilias , from the inscription on a label in the corner, which there is reason to suppose may have been intended for an Annunciation picture different from those already executed by Rossetti. The angel or female saint bears in her hand a bunch of lily stems, round which is wound a ribbon with the inscription “Aspice Lilia!” During the years 1880 and 1881 Rossetti was occupied with three large original pictures, The Day Dream , The Salutation of Beatrice , and La Pia ; with Found , which had been re-commissioned by Mr. William Graham; and with several replicas, of which the most important, delivered early in 1880, was the smaller Dante's Dream with the two predellas, done for Mr. Graham to replace the large one. After Mr. Graham's death, in 1886, this picture passed:

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti

The son of émigré Italian scholar Gabriel Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti and his wife Frances Polidori, D.G. Rossetti was born in London, England and originally named Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti. His family and friends called him "Gabriel", but in publications he put the name Dante first (in honor of Dante Alighieri). Like all his siblings, he aspired to be a poet and attended King's College London. However, he also wished to be a painter, having shown a great interest in Medieval Italian art. He studied at Henry Sass's Drawing Academy from 1841 to 1845 when he enrolled at the Antique School of the Royal Academy, leaving in 1848. After leaving the Royal Academy, Rossetti studied under Ford Madox Brown, with whom he was to retain a close relationship throughout his life. Rossetti was always more interested in the Medieval than in the modern side of the movement. He was publishing translations of Dante and other Medieval Italian poets, and his art also sought to adopt the stylistic characteristics of the early Italians. Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Rossetti, was inspired by the art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.