Friday 24th June 2016

 

‘The Salutation of Beatrice’ – a little known work by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) is to go on public display for the first time at the Walker Gallery Liverpool, 135 years after it was painted.

Executed shortly before the artist’s death in April 1882, the work illustrates  lines from the second sonnet in medieval Italian poet Dante Alighier’s Vita Nuova (New Life).   It depicts  Rossetti’s muse, the flame-haired Jane Morris, wife of the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Morris, as Beatrice Portinari, the subject of the poet’s unrequited love.  Dante, the spurned lover is in the background.

The painting belonged to Rossetti’s friend and patron Richards Leyland, a ship owner and art collector from Liverpool and is now owned by Leyland’s descendants.  It will hang alongside two other Rossettis owned by the Leylands;  Monna Rosa, an 1867 portrait of Leyland’s wife, Frances which has not been displayed publicly for more than 140 years and an 1870 chalk portrait of Leyland, never previously put on show.

Was this portrait of the Pre-Raphaelite’s muse purposely kept out of sight to keep the artist’s stock high?  According to the head of fine art at the National Museum Liverpool, Ann Bukantas, it is incredibly rare to find works  by a movement as popular as the Pre-Raphaelites that have not been exhibited.

 

Claire Moore, (BA, Hons)

GALLERY MANAGER

 

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