Copyright: © Tate Gallery, London 2001
Lucrezia Borgia
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1860-61, 1868
Physical Description
Medium: watercolour
Dimensions: 17 x 9 3/4 in.
Signature: monogram
Note: Monogram is located in the lower left corner.
Production Description
Production Date: 1860-61, 1868
Exhibition History: Hogarth Club, c. 1860, (in its original form); R.A., 1883
(no.345)
Repainting: 1868
As Surtees has noted, the
original watercolour “depicted a
dark-haired, purposeful Lucrezia, attired in heavy robes, her large black eyes
directed to the front, washing her hands in a basin having administered a fatal
dose of poison to her husband, Duke Alfonso Bisceglie” (Surtees,
A Catalogue Raisonné
, vol. 1, 77).
Provenance
Current Location: Tate Gallery
Catalog Number: 3063
Archival History: B.G. Windus; Christie's, Feb. 15, 1868 (lot 201),
£73. 10
s.; Frederick Leyland; Purchased by George Rae for £126;
Charles Ricketts; Presented by Charles Ricketts to the Tate in the
memory of Henry Michael Field, 1916
Reproductions
-
Angeli, DGR con 107 illustrazioni , 107. -
Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné , vol. 2, plate 189. -
Phythian, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , 32. -
Hollyer print, Delaware Art Museum.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
File Name:
s124.rap.xml
Scholarly Commentary
Production History
DGR completed the first version of this work in 1860-61, “a little drawing (as good a thing as I ever did on so small a scale)”, as he told Charles Augustus Howell in 1871 (Fredeman, Correspondence, 71.20). At that time he had exectuted a replica nearly twice the size of the original. The latter may well have induced DGR to repaint parts of the first picture along the lines of the replica. In any case, at some point before 1874 DGR replaced the original figure of Lucrezia with “a young woman of less distinction” (see Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné , vol. 1, 77).
Bibliography