The painting illustrates the text in the later part of the Vita Nuova when Dante is grieving over the loss of Beatrice and suddenly sees “a young and very beautiful lady, who was gazing upon me from a window with a gaze full of pity, so that the very sum of pity appeared gathered together in her” (see DGR's translation The New Life).

Есть масло 1879 года начато в 1870 и ещё много набросков посмотреть позже

МАРИАНА.1870.

Mariana. 1870. Oil on canvas. Aberdeen Art Museum, UK.

           Тема заимствована из начала четвёртого акта "Меры за меру" Вильяма Шекспира. Мариана, страдая от того, что её отверг её любовник Анжело, грустит, погружённая в слушание песни юноши-пажа:"О, уберите, уберите эти губы прочь." Россетти начертал песню на раме. Моделью для пажа послужил Вилли Грэйм, сын Вильяма Грэйма, заказчика картины.

             The subject is taken from the opening of Act IV of Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare. Mariana, suffering from rejection by her lover, Angelo, is engrossed by the boy's song, 'Take, O Take, those lips away', which Rossetti inscribed on the frame. The pageboy was posed for by Willie Graham, the son of William Graham who commissioned the picture.

'Lo! It is done. Above the enthroning throat The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss, The shadowed eyes remember and forsee. Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note That in all years (O love thy gift is this!) That they would look on her must come to me.'