Monna Rosa

Rossetti wrote to Frederick Leyland about the painting on 18 June 1867:

{{Blockquote|Mrs Leyland's picture is much advanced and in every way much altered, as I have again had it considerably enlarged! To begin a fresco as a pocket miniature seems to be my rule in art. The picture is now 29 X 21 inches sight measure . . . . I have now given the figure a flowing white and gold drapery, which I think comes remarkably well and suits the head perfectly. I think I cannot do better than call the picture again Monna Rosa, and adopt a quotation from Poliziano, which fits it happily:

Con manto d'oro, collana ed anelli,

Le piace aver con quelli

Non altro che una rosa ai suoi capelli.

Thus the lady, richly dressed, is cutting a rose to put in her hair, & the treatment of the figure is accounted for.Fredeman, Correspondence quoted in {{cite web

| editor-last =McGann | editor-first =Jerome | title =Monna Rosa, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

| work =Rossetti Archive | publisher =Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia

| year =2005 | url =http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s198.raw.html

| access-date =12 February 2012 }}}}

[[File:Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Monna Rosa (1862).jpg|thumb|Early photograph of the 1862 painting.{{cite web

| editor-last =McGann | editor-first =Jerome | title =Monna Rosa, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1862

| work =Rossetti Archive | publisher =Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia

| year =2005 | url =http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s153.rap.html

| access-date =12 February 2012 }}]]

Rossetti asked Leyland to return the painting for reworking and soon finished on 3 December 1873 at Kelmscott.{{cite book

| last =Fredeman | first =William Evan | title =The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The last decade, 1873–1882, Kelmscott to Birchington, 1873–1874

| publisher =Boydell & Brewer | year =2006 | pages =333–340 | url =https://books.google.com/books?id=a8ciRhA1NPUC | isbn =9780859916387 }}

About the time Rossetti was painting Monna Rosa, he introduced James Abbott McNeill Whistler to Leyland. Monna Rosa's peacock background and blue and white Chinese porcelain are similar to the themes in The Peacock Room that Whistler later created for Leyland.{{cite book

| last =Merrill | first =Linda | title =The Peacock Room: a cultural biography

| publisher =Yale University Press | year =1998 | pages =88–90 | url =https://books.google.com/books?id=Ha4xwgfjbmoC&pg=PA88 | isbn =9780300076110}}

File:FRLeylandsdrawingroom1892.jpg|thumb|right|320px|Six Rossetti paintings as hung in Leyland's drawing room, 1892. Monna Rosa hangs at the far left. (Click on any painting for its article.)

poly 80 200 25 200 25 280 80 280 Monna Rosa

poly 200 190 240 190 240 280 200 280 Mnemosyne (Rossetti)

poly 250 190 290 190 290 280 250 280 The Blessed Damozel

poly 300 210 330 210 330 280 300 280 Proserpine (Rossetti painting)

poly 352 215 400 215 400 280 352 280 Veronica Veronese

poly 530 220 570 220 570 280 530 280 Lady Lilith

desc none

Henry Currie Marillie describe the painting in 1904 as a "small but pretty picture" and a "study in beautiful colour." Red and gold highlight the roses, Leyland's dress, jewellery, and hair, as well as the flower pot and peacock screen in the background.{{cite book | last =Marillier | first =Henry Currie | title =Dante Gabriel Rossetti: an illustrated memorial of his art and life | publisher =G. Bell & Sons | year =1904 | page =[https://archive.org/details/dantegabrielros00marigoog/page/n23 101] | url =https://archive.org/details/dantegabrielros00marigoog }} Linda Merrill is less dismissive, writing that the painting is

{{Blockquote|more a costume picture than a portrait, with studio props to enhance the theme of purposeless beauty: the conceit called for an extravagant scarf studded with peacock feathers and a blue and white pot in the artist's favorite "hawthorn" pattern.}}

In another modern view, Jessica Feldman stresses the blue and white Chinese pot "that has become the emblem of aestheticism itself." The pot should not be viewed as simply decorative, but reflects the textures of the dress, roses and screen. It recalls Rossetti's collector's passion for oriental ware and even his penchant for translation – in this case translating a Chinese pot to an English painting.{{cite book

| last =Feldman | first =Jessica Rosalind | title =Victorian modernism: pragmatism and the varieties of aesthetic experience

| publisher =Cambridge University Press | year =2002 | pages =[https://archive.org/details/victorianmoderni0000feld/page/69 69]–71

| url =https://archive.org/details/victorianmoderni0000feld | url-access =registration | isbn = 978-0-521-81581-9}}

Monna Rosa was among the first of eighteen paintings Leyland commissioned from Rossetti, not counting unfulfilled commissions. Soon after acquiring the painting, they explored the idea of a Rossetti triptych, which was eventually formed with Mnemosyne, The Blessed Damozel, and Proserpine.Waking Dreams, p. 204. Three additional Rossetti painting were then hung in Leyland's drawing room, all of which Leyland called "stunners."Waking Dreams, p. 26 (figure 5).

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• List of paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

{{reflist|colwidth=33em}}

• {{cite book

| last =Wildman | first =Stephen

|author2=Laurel Bradley |author3=Deborah Cherry |author4=John Christian |author5=David B. Elliott |author6=Betty Elzea |author7=Margaretta Fredrick |author8=Caroline Hannah |author9=Jan Marsh |author10=Gayle Seymour

| title =Waking Dreams, the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum

| publisher =Art Services International | year =2004 | pages =395 }}

• Surtees, Virginia. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

{{Dante Gabriel Rossetti}}

{{Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood}}

Category:Paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Category:1862 paintings

Category:1867 paintings