“Marie Stillman” by Maria Zambaco

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Margherita di Prato (Meadow Daisy)

Maria Cassavetti Zambaco (1843-1914)

1886

Alloy metal

120 mm

"Zambaco's work is seen to the full in this romantically titled portrait of a woman with flowers entwined in her hair" (Attwood 1893). [Commentary continues below.]

Collection: British Museum (ref. 1887,0209.2)

[Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

Photograph and text by Jacqueline Banerjee

The flowers are, of course, daisies. But the gallery label for the "Pre-Raphaelite Sisters" exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, where the medal was photographed, tells us that the work is not just fanciful and ornamental: it has a particular historical resonance. Margherita was the name of a young woman in fourteenth-century Prato, near Florence, married to a merchant, whose life became known in some detail from documents discovered in the family home in 1870.

Charlotte Yeldham also points out that Zambaco's "association of female portraits with symbolic flower imagery (as in her medal of 1886 depicting Marie Spartali; BM) was a frequent Pre-Raphaelite practice." The confident tilt of the girl's ahead adds to her attraction here. No wonder Philip Attwood used it for the cover picture of his book on the medals of this period.

Related Material

[A Review of] "Pre-Raphaelite Sisters" at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 17 October 2019 – 26 January 2020

Bibliography

Attwood, Philip.Artistic Circles: The Medal in Britain, 1880-1918. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1992.

"Maria Zambaco (Biographical details)." British Museum. Web. 28 October 20-19.

Yeldham, Charlotte. "Pre-Raphaelite women artists (act. 1848–1870s), female contemporaries of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online edition. Web. 28 October 2019.

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Created 28 October 2019