Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dante-gabriel-rossetti-461" aria-label="More by Dante Gabriel Rossetti" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</a>
Sancta Lilias
Presented by Madame Deschamps in memory of Georgiana, Baroness Mount-Temple 1909
actions: postures and motions
adults
birth to death
body
death
emotional states and conditions
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
head / face
individuals: female
lily
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
looking down
love
named individuals
nostalgia
people
plants and flowers
portraits
purity - lily
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, ‘The Blessed Damozel’, 1850
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, poems
society
symbols and personifications
Wilding, Alexa
woman
<p>This is the abandoned first version of one of Rossetti’s most important pictures, <span>The Blessed Damozel </span>(1875–8). He first treated the subject in a poem which, inspired by Dante’s love for Beatrice, describes a dead woman’s yearning for her still-living lover. In the completed painting, Rossetti shows the Damozel looking down on her beloved from Heaven; this is the scene shown here. Rossetti’s fascination with the separation imposed by death proved eerily prophetic when his wife Elizabeth Siddall died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862.</p><p><em>Gallery label, November 2016</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
6 October 2001 – 6 January 2002
2002-01-06
6 October 2001 – 6 January 2002
2002-01-06
2001-10-06
Castle Museum (Norwich, UK)
2001-10-06
Frederick Sandys and the Pre-Raphaelites
Loan-out
12 July 2003 – 15 August 2004
2004-08-15
12 July 2003 – 28 September 2003
2003-09-28
2003-07-12
Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth, Australia)
25 October 2003 – 15 February 2004
2004-02-15
2003-10-25
Dunedin Public Art Gallery (Dunedin, New Zealand)
http://www.dunedin.art.museum
14 May 2004 – 15 August 2004
2004-08-15
2004-05-14
Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, USA)
2003-07-12
The Pre-Raphaelite Dream: Paintings and Drawings from the Tate Collection
Tate partnerships & programmes
24 February 2011 – 12 June 2011
2011-06-12
24 February 2011 – 12 June 2011
2011-06-12
2011-02-24
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Rome, Italy)
2011-02-24
The Myth of  Italy from Turner to Burne-Jones
Loan-out
12 September 2012 – 31 January 2014
2014-01-31
10 June 2013 – 22 September 2013
2013-09-22
2013-06-10
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
25 January 2014 – 6 April 2014
2014-04-06
2014-01-25
Mori Arts Centre (Tokyo, Japan)
19 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
2014-04-19
Palazzo Chiablese (Turin, Italy)
2012-09-12
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Exhibition
17 February 2013 – 31 August 2014
2014-08-31
10 June 2013 – 13 October 2013
2013-10-13
2013-06-10
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
25 January 2014 – 6 April 2014
2014-04-06
2014-01-25
Mori Arts Centre (Tokyo, Japan)
19 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
2014-04-19
Palazzo Chiablese (Turin, Italy)
2013-02-17
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Loan-out
7 August 2014 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
7 August 2014
2014-08-07
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2014-08-07
Gallery 9
Collection based display
Sancta Lilias
support: 483 × 457 mm
frame: 819 × 801 × 88 mm
Presented by Madame Deschamps in memory of Georgiana, Baroness Mount-Temple 1909
<p>This is an early, unfinished version of Rossetti's <i>The Blessed Damozel </i>(1875-8, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University). The picture was begun in September 1873, but, after working on the head, the artist soon abandoned it and had it cut down to its current size. The subject derives from one of Rossetti's own poems, first published in 1850 in <i>The Germ</i>:

</p><p>The blessed damozel leaned out<br/>From the gold bar of Heaven;<br/>Her eyes were deeper than the depth<br/>Of waters stilled at even;<br/>She had three lilies in her hand,<br/>And the stars in her hair were seven.

</p><p>The poem expresses the longing felt by a dead woman for her lover, who is still alive.  In the finished picture she looks down towards her beloved, who is depicted in the predella below. Behind her, pairs of lovers, united once again in heaven, embrace joyfully. The inspiration for Rossetti was clearly the premature death of his own wife, Lizzie Siddal, who died from an overdose of laudanum. Rossetti may also have been influenced in his choice of subject by the thoughts and writings of the Swedish theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).  In <i>Conjugial Love </i>(1768) Swedenburg wrote that each man or woman has an ideal partner - a 'conjugial' partner - and that their union constitutes an eternal, sanctified love. However, Rossetti did not use Lizzie's features for either <i>Sancta Lilias </i>or <i>The Blessed Damozel</i>. Instead, possibly at the suggestion of William Graham, who commissioned the work, he called upon the model Alexa Wilding. Even more significant, the women in the background of <i>The Blessed Damozel</i> were modelled on Jane Morris, perhaps denoting a dilemma in Rossetti's mind as to who his 'ideal partner' might be.

</p><p>In Rossetti's poem, the Damozel has seven stars in her hair.  This is an oblique reference to the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, who were transformed into the seven stars of the Pleiades.  In the picture Rossetti has included only six stars, since one of the stars, Merope, ashamed of her love for Sisyphus, a mere mortal, shined invisibly.  Rossetti, condemned to a meaningless and relentless existence without Lizzie, perhaps identifies with Sisyphus, who was forced to roll a giant boulder eternally uphill.  In the poem and the finished picture the Damozel holds three lilies, referring both to the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation.  In <i>Sancta Lilias</i> (Sacred Lily) Rossetti has substituted yellow irises, which belong to the lily family.  In Classical myth Iris was the goddess of the rainbow, the bridge between heaven and earth.  In the context of the picture, therefore, it may be intended to represent the link between Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal, between the earthly and the spiritual.

</p><p><b>Further reading: <br/></b>Virginia Surtees, <i>The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné</i>, 2 vols., Oxford 1971, p.153, no.257, reproduced pl.198.<br/>Andrew Wilton and Robert Upstone (eds), <i>The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones &amp; Watts: Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.191-3, reproduced p.192, in colour.

</p><p>Frances Fowle<br/>December 2000</p>
Summary
2001-03-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>Sancta Lilias is the abandoned first version of one of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s most important paintings, The Blessed Damozel 1875–8. It was based on a poem of the same name which he wrote as a teenager, inspired by the writings of Dante and Edgar Allen Poe. In it, Rossetti describes a woman in heaven yearning for her lover on earth, below.</p>
</div>

Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
actions: postures and motions adults birth to death body death emotional states and conditions emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas head / face individuals: female lily literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) looking down love named individuals nostalgia people plants and flowers portraits purity - lily Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, poems Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, ‘The Blessed Damozel’, 1850 society symbols and personifications Wilding, Alexa woman