Бруна Брунеллески

The invented Italian name is the story here. In 1878 Dante Gabriel Rossetti went back to a study he had made earlier for The Blue Silk Dress, his portrait of Jane Morris, wife of his friend William Morris and the face that runs through most of his late work. Rather than label the watercolour with her name, he called it Bruna Brunelleschi, a musical Tuscan invention nodding to her dark colouring while keeping her identity at a discreet distance. It is worked in his heavy late manner, all long neck and heavy-lidded eyes, the type he returned to again and again. Jane sat for him only a few more times after this. The watercolour was presented to the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge in 1946.