Recruiting at last in slow degrees his powers upon brush and canvas, he dedicated their first-fruits to the painting of that most beautiful and faithful memorial of the beloved dead—“Beata Beatrix,” the Blessed Beatrice—Dante’s Beatrice; for the immortal story loved in youth had now redoubled its hold upon his heart. The picture was commissioned by Lord Mount Temple, who was from this time one of Rossetti’s most generous patrons and intimate friends. It was begun at Mr. Madox Brown’s house, “The Hermitage,” on Highgate Hill, but finished at Stobhall, in Scotland, whither Mr. Brown and an equally devoted friend, Dr. John Marshall, had taken the painter in the hope of restoring his now shattered health and assuaging the sorrow that had occasioned its collapse. Rossetti afterwards said of the “Beata Beatrix” that no picture had ever cost him so much to paint, but that in no other task had he been conscious of so perfect a mastery of his instruments. “BEATA BEATRIX.” _From the National Gallery._ [Illustration] It should be remembered that of this picture, and indeed of several of Rossetti’s finest and best-known works, certain indifferent replicas exist which have been frequently mistaken for their originals. The “Beata Beatrix” in the Birmingham Art Gallery was only half painted by Rossetti, and finished by Madox Brown. Again in the case of “The Blessed Damozel” of a much later date, the more familiar version is the inferior one. There was also a smaller replica of “Dante’s Dream,” shown in London at the Guildhall Loan Exhibition of 1892. Moreover, it was Rossetti’s habit to execute most of his pictures in more than one medium; thus many of his early pen-and-ink drawings were presently reproduced in water-colour; the water-colour designs of 1852–1862 were afterwards transferred to oils; and most of the important oil-paintings of his maturity were duplicated in coloured chalk; some even passing through the pencil, ink, and water-colour stages also. Not infrequently it happened that the chalk version surpassed all the others, as, for instance, in the grand “Pandora” of 1878–79, the most powerful of all his drawings in that medium, and perhaps the greatest of his symbolic figures. Very often, too, he would begin a picture on a very small scale, and gradually enlarge it through successive stages to its final size, as in the case of “Monna Rosa,” concerning which he writes on the 18th of June, 1867, to his patron, Mr. F.R. Leyland, one of the most constant and sympathetic of his buyers and friends,—“The picture is much advanced and in every way much altered, as I have again had it considerably enlarged! To begin a fresco as a pocket-miniature seems to be my rule in Art.”