But it is in the presence of the greatest romantic passion known to European poetry—the ideal, immortal love of Dante for Beatrice—that Pre- Raphaelite painting reaches, in the art of Rossetti, the acme of its power to transfigure and interpret the highest experiences of the human soul. With the most chastened symbolism, the finest selectiveness of design and colouring, the loftiest fervour of thought and expression, Rossetti unfolds to us the inmost glories of Platonic love, as Dante knew it, and Michaelangelo; and as our own age vaguely but with increasing aspiration seeks it through many an error and much pain. He leads us in imagination through the sacred course of that all-embracing worship which upheld the soul of Dante through every vicissitude of toil and trial, from the first hour in which the smile of the Blessed Beatrice made the boy’s heart tremble for joy, until the solemn moment of resignation when “it was made known to him that his beloved Lady must die.” Again and again did Rossetti attempt the unwearying subject of “The Salutation of Beatrice.” The most important that remain to us of those efforts, which in one medium or another cover nearly the whole of his artistic career, are the early water-colour sketches in which the scene of the fateful meeting is laid in the portico of a church; the diptych showing in one compartment Beatrice saluting Dante in a street in Florence, while in the other she appears to him in a field of lilies in Paradise (“Il Purgatorio,” canto 30); the triptych repeating the same designs, but having in the centre panel a figure of Love holding a dial whereon is marked the date (June 9, 1290) of the salutation; and a much later version in single form, representing Beatrice, walking alone in Florence, within sight of Dante, but watched over by the guardian figure of Love, with crimson robe and wings. Of these works, the triptych is perhaps the most perfect. The left compartment is inscribed with Dante’s words, “E cui saluta fà tremar lo core,” and the right with those of the salutation in Paradise, “Guardami ben; ben son, ben son Beatrice” (“Behold and see if I am truly Beatrice”). Again we see the gracious lady passing before the eyes of her young lover in a procession through the chapel at Bargello, while above her is depicted “Giotto painting the portrait of Dante,”—a portrait actually discovered five centuries later on the chapel wall. Once more, Rossetti pictures Beatrice embarking with Dante in “The Boat of Love.” The motive of this work is taken from Dante’s sonnet to Guido Calvacanti, his poet- friend (who figures, together with Cimabue, the master of Giotto, in the sketch above mentioned), beginning: “Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I Were taken by some skilled enchanted spell, And placed on board a barque that should speed well Through wind and wave, and with our will comply.”