Le due madri

What survives here is a fragment. Around 1850 Rossetti, then in his early twenties and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, set out to paint a large canvas based on a poem by Robert Browning. He lost faith in it, cut the canvas down, and kept only this corner. The woman was first shown simply reading a book of Italian verse. Later Rossetti painted in the small girl with her hands pressed together in prayer, and in the shadows behind them a little carved statue of the Virgin holding her child. Those are the two mothers of the title, the living one and the one in stone, each with a child close by.