三重の薔薇

The three faces here belong to one child. She is May Morris, about 12 years old, the younger daughter of the designer William Morris and of Jane Morris, the dark-haired woman who sat for many of Rossetti's best-known pictures. Rossetti had wanted his usual model, Alexa Wilding, for this version, but she could not sit early in 1874, so he turned to May, who was close at hand. He set her head three times across the sheet, each turned differently and each holding a rose, and inscribed the Latin title, meaning roughly triple rose, on a little scroll. He worked it in watercolour and bodycolour, building the surface up with gum until it glows almost like oil.