Monna Vanna

Rossetti finished this opulent portrait in 1866 and then could not settle on what to call it. He first named it Venus Veneta, a Venetian Venus, nodding to Titian and the rich Renaissance painters he was imitating. Then he renamed it Monna Vanna, after a figure in Dante's La Vita Nuova, partly to stress the sitter's Italian air and partly to suggest vanity. Years later he tried Belcolore, but that one never stuck. The woman is Alexa Wilding, one of his favourite models, shown turning in a swirl of white and gold silk. She fingers a heavy spiral of coral beads at her breast, the kind of sumptuous detail Rossetti now cared about far more than any story.