Joli Coeur

By the late 1860s Rossetti had largely stopped painting the crowded medieval scenes of his early Pre-Raphaelite years and turned almost entirely to close-up heads of beautiful women, sold to a small circle of northern industrialists who paid well for them. This one dates from 1867. The French title means roughly sweetheart, lettered in gold at the top left beside his monogram, and the model wears a jewelled band and holds a sprig of blossom in a vaguely medieval, timeless dress. Her face closely echoes one of the bridesmaids in his larger painting The Beloved. A Manchester manufacturer, William Turner, bought it, which is how it came to hang in that city.