Hesterna Rosa

Date1865

Artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British Pre-Raphaelite painter, 1828–1882)

MediumWatercolor on paper

Dimensions10 3/4 × 14 3/4 in. (27.3 × 37.5 cm)
frame: 18 3/4 × 22 3/4 in. (47.6 × 57.8 cm)

Credit LineSamuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935

Object number1935-60

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsDRAWING

Label TextThe subject of Hesterna Rosa (“Yesterday’s Rose”) was drawn from Philip van Artvelde, a contemporary play set in 14th-century Flanders. The play chronicles the life of a young nobleman and his seemingly reckless relationship with a woman of lower social stature. Rossetti has chosen for depiction the moment when the woman in question, Elena, pauses to reflect on her life path and the wisdom of the choices made. The theme of the fallen woman was prominent in Rossetti’s work, and certainly autobiographical, but here he addresses it within the safety of the distant past.