A painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a memorial to his wife Elizabeth Siddal, who died in 1862. Rossetti had in fact begun the picture many years before, but took it up again in 1864 and completed it by 1870. Rossetti portrays his wife as a Beatrice at her death in Dante's 'Vita Nuova.' Beatrice sits in a death-like trance while a bird, a messenger of death, drops a poppy, a symbol of forgetfulness in her lap. The painting is typical of Rossetti's obsessions both with Dante and his dead wife.