Trends Modern Art

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Oil on canvas, 69.3 x 87.5 cm (27.28" x 34.45") Tate Gallery, London, UK.

Beata Beatrix is a portrait of Rossetti’s dead wife, Elizabeth Siddal. Once again the subject comes from Dante’s Vita Nuova, and shows the mystical translation of Beatrice from earth to heaven. On the right stands Dante, staring across to the Angel of Love. Beatrice sits beside a sundial on which the shadow falls on nine, the hour of her death on 9 June 1290. A red bird, the messenger of death, drops a poppy, the symbol of sleep, into her folded hands. (Olga's Gallery)

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