Dantis Amor

In 1860 Rossetti finally married Elizabeth Siddal, the model whose face runs through his work, and around the same time he was painting furniture for his friends. This panel was a cupboard door on a large settle that William Morris wanted decorated for his new home outside London. It was meant to be the middle of three scenes from Dante's life, the poet's love for Beatrice, whom he lost young. Rossetti turned her death into a passage into heaven, a winged figure with a sundial dividing a gold sun from a blue night sky. Siddal's features appear in the crescent moon at the lower right. Within two years she too was dead.