La Bella Mano

By 1875 Rossetti had turned away from telling stories in paint. La Bella Mano, the beautiful hand, gives you a richly dressed woman washing her hands at a basin while two winged cupids attend her, and there is no tale to follow, only mood, color, and ornament to dwell on. This was the new Aesthetic idea, painting made for beauty rather than for a moral. Rossetti planned it as a Titianesque subject and loaded it with signs of Venus, the goddess of love, a scallop shell recalling her birth from the sea, a convex mirror behind her reflecting a bedroom with its waiting bed. He wrote a sonnet to go with it, calling the hand a flower of Venus. He painted every ring and bracelet with a jeweller's care.