Maria Madalena

By 1877 Rossetti had pulled back from the world. Five years earlier a breakdown and a suicide attempt had left him leaning on chloral, the sleeping drug he took with whisky, and he spent his last years mostly indoors, painting the same kind of face over and over, red hair, heavy lips, a long neck. This is one of them, given the name of Mary Magdalene, the repentant follower of Christ, a figure he had returned to for decades. He had drawn her once at the door of a Pharisee's house. What moved him to paint this particular version is not recorded, and who sat for it is not certain. The museum's best guess is a housemaid remembered now only as Mary.