The Damsel of Sanct Grael

The year is 1857, and Rossetti is deep in a medieval revival of his own making. That summer he gathered a group of young painters to cover the walls of the Oxford Union with scenes from Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and the Grail legend was on his mind. This small watercolour belongs to the same world. A woman holds the Holy Grail in one hand and, in the other, a basket carrying the Host, a white dove of the Holy Spirit above her head. The words Sanct Grael are lettered at either side, divided by the gold disc of her halo. The face is almost certainly Elizabeth Siddal, the model and artist Rossetti would marry three years later. He came back to the subject once more in an oil of 1874, by then a very different picture.