The Blessed Damozel

This painting by John Byam Shaw is based on two stanzas from a poem by artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, inscribed on parchment in the bottom right of the painting. The 'Damozel' herself is dressed in white, standing with her lover in the right of the composition. The scene illustrates Rossetti's description of the lovers entering a heavenly grove and encountering the Virgin Mary, who sits in the centre dressed in a blue mantle. The poem contains mystical but unspecific symbolism, but deals with physical and spiritual love. Byam Shaw was heavily influenced by Rossetti's own paintings, and uses a range of vivid, bright colours and finely drawn lines in the manner of the Pre-Raphelites.