Marie Stillman: The Enchanted Garden, 1889 (detail)

Maria Spartali (1844-1927) was born to a Greek family living in London. She was a celebrated beauty and modelled for the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, and for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She appears with Alexa Wilding in the latter's The Bower Meadow of 1872.  An accomplished artist, she studied under the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, although her style shows more of the influence of Rossetti. The early Pre-Raphaelites believed in a return to the highly finished, detailed surfaces and subject matter of the Italian School prior to the changes of the High Renaissance. Through Rossetti's circle of friends she met and married the American journalist and photographer William J.Stillman.

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HC-787: card size 6" x 6" (150mm x 150mm)