A Vision of Fiammetta is an oil painting

Oil painting

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

 in the Pre-Raphaelite which was created by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

 in 1878. The painting was one half of one of Rossetti's "double works", accompanying his Ballads and Sonnets (1881). Maria Spartali Stillman

Marie Spartali Stillman

Marie Euphrosyne Spartali, later Stillman , was a British Pre-Raphaelite painter of Greek descent, arguably the greatest female artist of that movement...

 modelled for the painting. The subject of painting is Boccacio's muse named Fiammetta

Fiammetta

Fiammetta, Fiametta — pseudonym of Giovanni Boccaccio's beloved and muse, her real name may have been Maria d’Aquino.-Boccaccio's works with her name:* The Filocolo* Teseida* Il Filostrato* Ninfale d'Ameto...

.

Subject

The frame of the painting is inscribed with three texts: the sonnet

Sonnet

A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

 by Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...

 entitled "On his Last Sight of Fiammetta" which inspired the painting. Also included are Rossetti's translation of the sonnet, and his own original composition which mirrors the subject of the painting, entitled Fiametta. For a Picture:

Behold Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.

Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she

stands;

And as she sways the branches with her hands,

Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer,

In separate petals shed, each like a tear;

While from the quivering bough the bird expands

His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands

Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death

drawn near.

All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air:

10 The angel circling round her aureole

Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole:

While she, with reassuring eyes most fair,

A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere

On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.

Provenence

The painting was originally in the possession of William Alfred Turner (1839-1886) , a businessman, director for a time of the Edison Electric Lighting Company, who owned Joli cœur (1867 Manchester City Art Gallery), Water Willow, a chalk study for La Bella Mano, another one for Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne , source of the word mnemonic, was the personification of memory in Greek mythology. This titaness was the daughter of Gaia and Uranus and the mother of the nine Muses by Zeus:* Calliope * Clio * Erato...

(1876, and the oil version of Proserpine (1877 collc privée). Through a sequence of other owners A Vision of Fiammetta has now found its way into the collection of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...

.