Monna Rosa

By 1867 Rossetti had a patron worth keeping. Frederick Leyland was a Liverpool shipping magnate, and this is his wife, Frances, one of the first works in what became a run of eighteen commissions from him. So Rossetti is not painting a hired studio model here but the woman of the house, richly dressed, reaching up to cut a rose for her hair. He was never quite satisfied with it. Years later he asked Leyland to send the picture back so he could rework the face and hands, and only signed it off in 1873. The gold-patterned fabric and the sprig of blossom point to the direction his art was taking in these years, away from storytelling and toward pure decorative surface, the beauty of a woman among flowers and rich cloth for its own sake.