What it is
Beatrice, from Dante's Vita Nuova, sits with closed eyes and open hands in a golden haze at the moment of her passing, as a dove drops a flower into her lap.
What it represents
Love and mourning fused into one image. Rossetti painted it after the death of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, who modelled for it.
The symbolism
The dove carries a white poppy, the flower of sleep and death. Behind her a sundial marks the hour of Beatrice's death, and in the shadows Dante and the figure of Love look on. It is a picture of a person already becoming memory.
Poems and letters beside it
poem
When You Are Old
W.B. Yeats (1893)
A tender poem about being loved for the soul and not the surface. Beata Beatrix is Rossetti's painting of a love held beyond loss.
poem
Remember
Christina Rossetti (1849)
A request to be remembered, and then to be forgiven for forgetting. Rossetti painted his wife, lost too young, as a figure in quiet trance.
poem
Surprised by Joy
William Wordsworth (1815)
The grief of forgetting for a moment, and then remembering. Beata Beatrix hovers between waking and vision in the same way.
