File talk:William Dyce - Beatrice 01.jpg

“	Gladstone's work for prostitutes had long been an expression of the same principle. He kept up his rescue efforts even when in high office, and by 1854 he had been involved in eighty to ninety cases. In no instance, he ruefully recorded, had a girl's way of life been changed solely through his help. Some had exercised a fascination over Gladstone. One, Miss Summerhayes, was so striking that he had her painted in 1859 by William Dyce as Dante's Beatrice.	”
—David William Bebbington, William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993, p. 138

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“	In 1859 William Gladstone commissioned a painting from William Dyce which was to become known as Beatrice (originally entitled Lady with a Coronet of Jasmine). A portrait of a young woman wearing a plain Renaissance dress, Beatrice is one of the first Victorian paintings depicting Dante's muse and reflects an obsession with Beatrice and the Vita Nuova which is typical of the mid and late-Victorian reception of Dante. The painting comes with a story: Gladstone had chosen a prostitute called Marian Summerhayes to sit as the painting's Beatrice, thereby turning this portrait of Dante's beloved into a manifestation of his philanthropic rescue work for fallen women. Albeit an anecdote, the episode surrounding Dyce's painting gives a revealing glimpse into the Victorian afterlife of Beatrice. Even for the prime minister, Beatrice embodied an ideal of purity and feminine virtue Victorian women should aspire to.	”
—Julia Straub, Dante's Beatrice and Victorian Gender Ideology, in Aida Audeh, Nick Havely, Dante in the Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity, and Appropriation, Oxford University Press, 15/mar/2012, p. 204

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“	The portrait of Summerhayes, originally entitled Lady with a coronet of jasmine, is now known as Beatrice, and hangs in the Aberdeen Art Gallery (see plate 6). The identity of the sitter was unknown until the publication of volume V of the Diaries in 1978 but from the start she was widely held to represent Dante's ideal woman of the Commedia. Five years after its completion, a Dante scholar in Florence wrote to Dyce that the model was "a perfect Florentine type". Dyce had, she maintained, used the same hair decoration as that used by Botticelli, "a touch that adds beauty to the picture. I like this one better than any of the many Beatrices I have seen". Dyce's correspondent was mistaken about the hair decoration in one important respect: the Beatrice of the Commedia was wearing a crown of olive branches (symbolising wisdom), not of jasmine (which traditionally represent purity), when Dante met her in the Earthly Paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory. But visually the Dyce and Botticelli images — and their messages — are very similar. Within a few weeks of their acquaintance, Gladstone realised that his emotions were not under control and "my thoughts of Summerhayes require to be limited and purged". The relationship ended shortly afterwards. It is not known what Gladstone had paid for the Summerhayes portrait. But in June 1875 he sold it at auction for ₤420.	”
—Anne Isba, Gladstone and Dante: Victorian Statesman, Medieval Poet, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2006, p. 79

--Micione (talk) 06:21, 7 June 2014 (UTC)