Golden Water

In the 1850s Dante Gabriel Rossetti turned out a run of small, jewel-bright watercolours, densely coloured and packed to the edges, that look more like medieval manuscript pages than Victorian pictures. This is one of them, and the story comes from the Arabian Nights. The young woman is Princess Parizade, near the end of a tale in which she braves an enchanted mountain to fetch three wonders, the singing tree, the talking bird, and the golden water she carries here in the black flask. She is about to pour that water over a field of black stones, which are really enchanted men, her own brothers among them, to bring them back to life. Behind her Rossetti packs in the mauve blossom of the singing tree and the scarlet bird in its branches. The sheet is tiny and the colour laid on as thick as enamel.