The pictures for 1875 include _La Bella Mano_, which represents a lady washing her "beautiful hands" in a scalloped basin of brass; also some of the studies for the _Blessed Damozel_, a finished pen-and-ink study for a great picture of 1877, the _Astarte Syriaca_, and a large pencil drawing called _The Question_ or _The Sphinx_. [Illustration: ASTARTE SYRIACA. (By permission of the Art Gallery Committee of the Manchester Corporation.)] The following year was mainly devoted to the _Blessed Damozel_, an attempt to realize on canvas Rossetti's early poem which first appeared in "The Germ." The picture is a very fine one. Rossetti filled in the background behind the stooping figure of the damozel with a heavenly landscape, in which were countless pairs of embracing lovers. In 1877 he added a predella representing the earthly lover gazing up through space, and in 1879 he painted a replica, omitting the background of lovers and substituting two angel heads rather suggestive of those which occur in _La Ghirlandata_. The year 1877 contains but three items, two of which are, however, the important oil-pictures _Astarte Syriaca_ and _The Sea-Spell_. The third was a _Magdalen_ bearing the vase of spikenard. _Astarte Syriaca_ is a massive figure, with face and hair strongly reminiscent of Mrs. Morris. It was bought at its first owner's death for the Corporation Art Gallery of Manchester. The two finished items of 1878--for as the years advance the output grows less and less--are _A Vision of Fiammetta_ and a water-colour study of a head called _Bruna Brunelleschi_. _Fiammetta_ is a fine and striking conception, representing on a life-size scale the lady beloved by Boccaccio, to whom he addressed the sonnet which begins: "Round her red garland and her golden hair, I saw a fire about Fiammetta's head." The sitter for _Fiammetta_ was Mrs. W. J. Stillman. _La Donna della Finestra_ was painted in 1879. This "Lady of the Window," also known as "The Lady of Pity," is she who in Dante's "Vita Nuova" is described as looking down upon the poet one day when he was overcome with grief. The head is taken from Mrs. Morris, much modified by the conventions which Rossetti at this time introduced into all his faces. Not the least charming feature of the picture is the clustering mass of beautifully painted fig-leaves growing up to the balcony in which the lady sits. During 1880 and 1881 Rossetti was occupied with three large pictures, _The Day Dream_, _The Salutation of Beatrice_, and _La Pia_; with _Found_, which had been re-commissioned by Mr. William Graham; and with several replicas, of which the most important was the smaller _Dante's Dream_.