The subject of this drawing, The Blessed Damozel, is taken from the artist Gabriel Dante Rossetti’s poem by the same title, which was first published in February 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite magazine The Germ. The subject is a young woman who has died and waits for her lover to join her in heaven. The poem’s opening lines are: The blessed damozel looked out/From the gold bar of heaven/ Her eyes were deeper than the depth/ Of waters stilled at even.
This study was for an oil painting (now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, USA). The painting was commissioned from Rossetti by the Scottish politician and art patron William Graham in 1871, and completed in 1877. The model was Alexa Wilding, a favourite of Rossetti who modelled for many of his paintings.
