Although WMR wrote that this story “was written in December 1849, almost entirely in one night (or rather earliest morning)” ( 1911, 679n ), that statement is not correct. In fact DGR began the work sometime before 24 September 1849, and he clearly did so with the object of including it in the first number of the projected (see his letter to WMR of 24 September 1849, Fredeman, , 49. 13 ). DGR left for his trip to France and Belgium at the end of September and almost certainly did no work on the story until he returned to London at the beginning of November.

WMR's contemporary notes show that the story was “resumed” on 17 December 1849. Whether DGR had done any work on the piece during the previous six weeks is unclear, but we do know that from the 17th the composition process was continuous and took something over five days. On the 22nd he had “finished the epilogue to ” (Fredeman, , 33-35 ). The crucial day was apparently 21 December, when DGR “had been all day at his tale, and sat up all night with it as well, without going to bed. By this means he was able to finish the narrative”. Hall Caine was the first to circulate the story of the single night of composition (see Caine, , 134 ).

No manuscript of the story appears extant.

DGR began correcting the story right after finishing its composition. He seems to have received some proofs on 24 December and was making “certain corrections and alterations” on the 25th. On the 27th he had to call for a second proof for correcting since the first was “full of blunders” (Fredeman, The P.R.B. Journal 36-37 ). All these corrections were prepared for the first publication of the story in no. 1 of the . The story was reprinted from the text in the American art journal in vol. 5 (October 1858), pages 273-278 .

DGR published the story later in the from the text that he had printed in 1869 in the early pre-publication proofs and trial books for his 1870 . Before, during, and after the first of these 1869 printings—the Penkill Proofs— DGR went through the story and made various alterations. The September and October changes were sometimes made at the suggestion of his brother, as their correspondence with each other during August and September 1869 shows (see Fredeman, , 69. 130 to 69. 144 ) and Peattie, , 221-226 ). In general, WMR suggested changes that would correct anachronisms and errors, as in the opening paragraph where he told DGR to remove the “crucifixes and addolorate ” because they were “not characteristic of the time.”

DGR made a few hand corrections to some of the pamphlet copies of the work that his publisher Ellis, at DGR's request, had printed off in late 1869 for private distribution (see textual notes below for paragraphs 29 and 32).

Morse dismisses Ford Madox Hueffer's claim (see Hueffer, (1902), 47 ) that an early drawing by DGR was the “figura mistica” of the story. This watercolor, thought to be done in mid-1848 “represents an auburn-haired young woman standing with joined hands in the posture described by Rossetti” in his story (see Morse, “Autobiographical Elements in ‘Hand and Soul’”, 336 ). Morse sees the model as Christina Rossetti but this suggestion is not persuasive. Morse does maintain that the drawing runs in the line of inspiration and idea that culminated in the story.

WMR points out (see Family Letters , I. 155 ) that DGR made a drawing for an engraving that was intended to illustrate the tale in a later number of the . The drawing was made in March 1850, but when DGR saw the engraving “he was so displeased with the result that . . . he tore up the impression and scratched the plate over.” The picture represented Chiaro “in the act of painting his Soul.”

From reprinting and WMR's comments on the work in , it is clear that the story established a reputation for itself very early. That reputation is reflected in DGR's decision to have the tale set in type, and then published, in 1869; and it is very likely that the successful American reprint must have reaffirmed DGR's own committment to the work. The central position it holds in DGR's oeuvre, both pictorial and literary, is now firmly established.

The story was first published on 1 January in the no. 1 (pages 23-33), and this text was reprinted in 1858 in the American periodical . The reprinted text has several significant substantive alterations plus a number of small word and phrase changes. In addition, the editors put in American spellings for various words and they translated the foreign language words in DGR's tale.

In 1869 DGR had the work set in type with a body of his poems in the Penkill Proofs, the first of the pre-publication textual states that would eventuate in the publication of the 1870 . The text of the story here derives from The Germ text, a copy of which DGR used to mark up with his initial corrections and revisions in August 1869. This copy is in the Houghton Library. Various further changes to the text were made during the next few months (August - November 1869) as the tale passed through DGR's successive proof states for his 1870 Poems.

When the manuscript book of DGR's poems that had been buried in his wife's grave was exhumed in October 1869, DGR began the process of incorporating these works into the pre-publication texts, and in doing so he decided to remove the prose story. was printed with the First Trial Book early in October, but when the Second Trial Book was printed it was not present (around 25 November). DGR detached the pages of the First Trial Book containing the story ([178]-199) and had them printed and distributed privately as a small pamphlet paginated [1]-22. At the same time he arranged to have it published in , where it appeared in the December issue (n.s. 7, pages 692-702 ).

Copies of the privately printed pamphlet have some hand corrections of a few errors, and one copy (the copy at Texas, originally owned by William Sharp) carries a substantive change by DGR, the last that he made.

Mark Samuel Lasner's bibliographical essay on the private printing of is an invaluable guide for anyone trying to get a clear view of DGR's general publishing intentions at this crucial period in late 1869.

clearly establishes the socio-historical locus of its imaginary events. Bentley is perhaps not correct when he says that “Chiaro is the fictional equivalent of Orcagna, Gozzoli, and the other artists whose ‘wall paintings’ had come to Rossetti's attention in 1848 through Lasinio's engravings after the (1812) .” The period of DGR's story is earlier, as the epigraph from Bonaggiunta Urbiciana suggests, and as the reference to Giunta Pisano makes certain; specifically, it is the mid- to late thirteenth-century when Italian art is on the brink of the Renaissance. Giotto has not yet appeared, indeed (according to the story), even Cimabue is only just coming into public prominence. The point of all this is to encourage the reader to make a mental act of art historical recovery: that is, not only to try to imagine this primitive cultural scene, but to realize it in Vasarian terms. For DGR's tale, in the end, is an effort to rethink art history outside of the humanist paradigm that Vasari's had laid down as the truth of the history of Italian art, and hence as the standard of measuring the truth and value of European art in general. The story of Chiaro is the story of an artist who refused to take the Renaissance road. As such, it is a story with a profound contemporary (mid-Victorian) message. It is a message that in certain respects anticipates a similar refusal made by programmatic Modernist artists.

Although Pfordresher, following Wendell V. Harris, argues that DGR's story is the fons et origo of the “modern short story” (see Pfordresher, 103-104 ), the real source is E. A. Poe, just as Poe's tales — in particular his hoax tales like — was the inspiration for DGR's extraordinary tale. Indeed, the innovative bibliographical format of early nineteenth-century periodicals like should probably be the credited source for all this kind of work, for it was that textual environment which encouraged the kind of fiction Poe and DGR created. That is to say, by throwing together in the same periodical a miscellany of materials, both fiction and reportage, and other periodicals created the conditions for Poe's hoaxes as well as DGR's less ironical derivative works like and , as well as the flood of brilliant works that descend from those things.

The fact that the story was taken for historical truth by many during DGR's lifetime (see Sharp, DGR: A Record and a Study , 285-286 ; and Peattie, Letters of William Michael Rossetti , 101n ) is relevant to its literary character. It is, like so many Pre-Raphaelite ballads and other works, written in a pastiche style. The latter is no mere rhetorical affectation. It represents a fundamental moral and aesthetic feature of the Pre-Raphaelite program, which attempted a kind of resurrection of certain cultural and spiritual values it associated with late Medieval art and society. The act of pastiche was for DGR, and probably for Morris as well, a sign that a contemporary work was aspiring to carry out, in a secular age, a transcendentalizing spiritual act equivalent to the devotional acts they saw executed in primitive European art and poetry.

Bentley has usefully noted a number of other important literary influences on : T. G. Hake's (1840), Charles Wells 's (1822 ), and of course Browning (especially ) and ), Dante's , and Vasari's (1550, 1568). The influence is especially important since DGR's tale is virtually a re-writing of its central ideas (a congruence less easy to see because of Browning's convoluted management of the events of his poetic tale).

Finally, DGR's story ultimately derives from a text in Dante, , IX. 94-99 , which DGR translated.

Although formally a work of fiction, the story has always (and rightly) been taken as DGR's artistic manifesto. In this respect the work's autobiographical character must be acknowledged, with Chiaro being DGR's alter ego in the tale. Morse argues that Giunta Pisano is Ford Madox Brown, and that the “figura mistica” painting of the tale is a watercolor DGR executed between March and August 1848, before he wrote his story. The latter two identifications are perhaps unwontedly specific; nonetheless, they correctly signal the intensely personal character of DGR's story.

Bentley, “ ” Forsythe, “” Giles, “ ,” 101-108 Gordon, “” Gregory, II. 165 Gurney, “” Lasner, “” Lewis, , 120-124 Morse, “ ” Pfordresher, “ ” Sharp, , 285-301 Wise, IV. 122