Flora

Evelyn De Morgan painted Flora in Florence in 1894, and the whole picture is a bow to the city's Renaissance masters. She had travelled from London to study Botticelli directly, copying from the Primavera and the Birth of Venus, and you can feel both here in the goddess of spring standing tall among flowers. The blossoms are chosen, not decorative: primroses, forget-me-nots and cyclamen scattered through the grass, all old signs of renewal, with a loquat tree behind her that fruits in spring. Her model was a woman named Jane Hales, whom she drew again and again to get the figure right. De Morgan was one of the few women running a serious painting career in late Victorian Britain, and a Scottish shipowner, William Imrie, bought much of what she made, including this.