A Vision of Fiammetta
Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828–1882)
Date: 1878
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Private Collection
Description
The painting was one half of one of Rossetti's "double works", accompanying his Ballads and Sonnets (1881). Maria Spartali Stillman modelled for the painting. The subject of painting is Boccaccio's muse named Fiammetta.
The frame of the painting is inscribed with three texts: the sonnet by Boccaccio entitled "On his Last Sight of Fiammetta," which inspired the painting; Rossetti's translation of it, and his own poem mirroring the painting:
Behold Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.
Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands; And as she sways the branches with her hands, Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer, In separate petals shed, each like a tear; While from the quivering bough the bird expands His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death drawn near.
All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air: The angel circling round her aureole Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole: While she, with reassuring eyes most fair, A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere
On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.
