The Salutation of Beatrice

Rossetti spent his life shadowing another man's love story. Back in 1861 he had translated Dante's Vita Nuova, the poet's account of his hopeless devotion to Beatrice, a woman he barely spoke to and who died young. Here Beatrice comes forward in gold while Dante stands behind her, sheltered by a red-robed figure of Love. The model was Jane Morris, the wife of Rossetti's friend William Morris and, by most accounts, the great longing of his own late years. He seems to have folded his feeling for her into Dante's feeling for Beatrice. He painted this around 1880 and laboured at it near the end. It was the last large canvas he made before his death in 1882.