Silencio

1870 was a raw year for Rossetti. Eight years earlier his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, had died of an overdose, and in his grief he had buried the only manuscript of his poems in her coffin. In the autumn of 1869 he had the grave opened and the pages recovered, and in 1870 he published them at last, a decision that left him sleepless and leaning hard on the drug chloral. Out of those same months comes this drawing, the one he called his own favourite: a veiled woman who is Silence itself, drawing a curtain around the little shrine where she sits. In her hand is a branch of peach, which the ancient world used as a sign for keeping quiet. Two years later, in 1872, while Rossetti lay seriously ill, the drawing he prized most was sold off without his knowledge.