Mariana

Mariana (1870) at Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums takes its subject from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and Tennyson's celebrated poem of the same name — the woman abandoned by her betrothed, waiting alone in a moated grange. Rossetti's Mariana connects to Millais's famous version of 1851 and to the broader Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian engagement with female figures of patient, melancholic waiting. By 1870, Rossetti had long since moved beyond the Brotherhood's original phase into his mature Aesthetic Movement style, but the Shakespearean-Tennysonian subject provided a familiar literary grounding for an essentially symbolic treatment. Mariana's famous wait — her longing for Angelo who will never return — made her a vehicle for meditating on desire, abandonment, and the passage of time, all themes that resonated in Rossetti's own emotional life.

The Mariana figure is typically rendered in an interior setting suggesting enclosure and waiting — window light from outside, the figure turned away or looking out. Rossetti exploits the contrast between the dim interior and the implied outdoor world beyond the window.