Paolo and Francesca

Alexander Munro

Date: 1852

Materials: Marble

Tragic lovers

Munro was a close friend of Rossetti and shared a studio with Arthur Hughes in the 1850s. This is a rare example of the early Pre-Raphaelite style in three-dimensional form. Francesca da Rimini (died circa 1288) was betrothed to the deformed Giancotto Malatesta of Rimini, but she fell in love with his younger brother Paolo while they read together. Giancotto surprised the young lovers and stabbed them both to death. Dante later described them in the 'Divine Comedy' with other tragic lovers of history condemned to be swept along the wind in the second circle of Hell.

Great Exhibition

The sculpture was originally completed in plaster and exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

W. E. Gladstone, then Member of Parliament for Oxford University, was so impressed that he commissioned its translation into stone, relying on the sculptor's assurance:

"that the freshness of the idea which is very well expressed in the clay can be reproduced without loss in the marble"

The Spectator

In 1852,'The Spectator' magazine described the piece as having:

"a burning tenderness in Paolo, a yielding sweetness in Francesca, worth any amount of those merely classical and respectable traditions with which we are so familiar"