Die schöne Rosamund

Fair Rosamund was Rosamund Clifford, remembered in legend as the favourite mistress of Henry II, king of England in the 12th century. The story went that he hid her deep inside a maze at his manor of Woodstock, reached by a single thread, and Rossetti gives her a red silk cord in her hand, the line said to warn her when the king was coming. He painted her in 1861, using Fanny Cornforth, a model he was involved with even though he had married Elizabeth Siddal only the year before. The clues are quietly placed: hearts topped by a crown carved along the balustrade, a rose tucked in her hair for her name. The painting now hangs in the National Museum in Cardiff.