The Girlhood of Mary Virgin

A young Mary sits embroidering a lily beside her mother, and every object around her quietly foretells what is to come. It was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's first finished oil painting, signed with the secret letters P.R.B.

The story behind the painting

Rossetti began the painting in the summer of 1848, working hard to finish it for an exhibition in March 1849. In November 1848 he wrote to his father's friend Charles Lyell of Kinnordy that the subject would surely appeal to members of a religious community. It is his first completed oil painting, signed Dante Gabriele Rossetti P.R.B. 1849, the initials of the new Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Wikipedia dates it 1849, while Wikidata gives only the 1840s. The models came from home: his mother Frances posed as Saint Anne, his sister Christina Rossetti as Mary, and the family servant Williams as Joachim.

What to look for

Older art usually showed Anne teaching Mary to read. Here Mary instead embroiders a lily, symbol of her purity, under Anne's guidance, while her father Joachim prunes a vine outside, a vine shaped like a cross. A crossed palm branch lies on the floor, pale roses and thorny branches hang on the wall, an oil lamp stands for piety, and three books are coloured for the cardinal virtues. A dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, foretells the Annunciation. The poet William Bell Scott saw Rossetti at work and noted that he painted in oils with watercolour brushes, very thinly, on canvas primed white and smooth as cardboard, so every tint stayed transparent.

Meaning and intent

The picture is about a calm childhood shadowed by a future the child cannot see. The vine refers to Christ, who calls himself the true vine, and its cross shape points to his Passion. The palm recalls Palm Sunday and Good Friday, and the roses and thorns the seven joys and seven sorrows of Mary. Rossetti wrote two sonnets to explain the symbols: one was engraved at the foot of the original frame and the other printed in the exhibition catalogue. Scott, watching the young painter, felt he was acting purely from an aesthetic motive, a mixture of genius and dilettantism.

Legacy

First shown at the Free Exhibition at Hyde Park Corner, the painting was generally well received. It was bought by Louisa, Marchioness of Bath, a family friend, and Rossetti repainted Mary's dress and the angel's face before sending it. The money paid for a trip to Belgium and France with William Holman Hunt. Shown again in 1850, it met a cooler reception. In 1864 its owner Lady Louise Fielding sent it back for more work: Rossetti turned the angel's wings from white to deep pink and Mary's sleeves from yellow to brown, and gave it a rectangular frame with both sonnets. Agnes Jekyll bequeathed it to the Tate in 1937.