Le Rêve de Dante

A poet in black is led by an angel in red to the bed of the woman he loved and never won. Dante's Dream is Rossetti's largest painting, and it once blotted every other picture from W. B. Yeats's mind.

The story behind the painting

Rossetti had a lifelong interest in the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The painting comes from Dante's La Vita Nuova, in which the poet dreams that he is led to the deathbed of Beatrice Portinari, the object of his unfulfilled love. Rossetti first treated the composition in a smaller watercolour and gouache in 1856, now in Tate Britain, measuring 48.7 by 66.2 cm. In 1871 he returned to it on a monumental scale in oil, and in 1880 he painted a smaller replica with two predella panels for his patron William Graham, now in Dundee.

What to look for

Dante, dressed in black, stands looking at Beatrice, who lies dying on a bed. Two women in green hold a canopy over her. An angel in red holds Dante's hand and leans forward to kiss Beatrice. The canvas measures 216 by 312.4 cm. Look for the symbols Rossetti wove through the scene: the green clothes of the attendants signify hope, the spring flowers in the foreground stand for purity, and red doves stand for love. Jane Morris, wife of William Morris, posed for Beatrice, and Alexa Wilding and Marie Stillman posed as the grieving handmaidens.

Meaning and intent

Rossetti creates a visionary world rather than a real room. Dante does not reach Beatrice himself; love, in the form of the angel, guides him and gives the kiss he never could. The attendants' hope, the flowers' purity and the doves' love surround a death that the poet can only witness. W. B. Yeats later recalled seeing the painting in Liverpool on his way to Sligo and wrote that its colour, its people and its romantic architecture had blotted all other pictures away.

Legacy

The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool bought the painting directly from Rossetti in 1881, in a purchase negotiated by the novelist Hall Caine. Its journey to Berlin in 1897 to be photographed left it dirty, and by 1904 it was in bad condition. In 1908 it was relined at the National Gallery in London. During the Second World War it was taken off its stretcher, rolled and stored in the gallery basement, then moved in 1941 to Ellesmere College in Shropshire, where some damage was noted. After conservation in 1960 and 1985, an examination in 2003 found it in good condition.