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Dante Gabriel Rossetti; The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1848) -- Rossetti's first major work, painted under Holman Hunt's tutelage, shows a good deal of Hunt's influence, as well as the artist's own problems with perspective. (All the figures are the same size, regardless of where they are in the picture, giving things a rather flat look.) Symbols abound: the lily, the dove, the lamp (purity), the trellis (the Holy Ghost), the palm fronds. Rossetti wrote a sonnet explaining all this, and incorporated it into the frame.
Rossetti's younger sister Christina sat for the Virgin; the artist's mother, Frances Rossetti, for Saint Anne. The odd little embroidery table reappears in
The Annunciation.
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