Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Fiammetta

Boccaccio's muse

Fiammetta was the pen name for Giovanni Boccaccio's lover, the inspiration for his early romances. Rossetti is painting a literary figure, not a real woman.

FIAMMETTA
BEHOLD Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.

Boccaccio's muse

Fiammetta was the pen name for Giovanni Boccaccio's lover, the inspiration for his early romances. Rossetti is painting a literary figure, not a real woman.

Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands;
And as she sways the branches with her hands,
Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer,

Falling petals as tears

The simile does double work—petals fall like tears, but also *each petal* resembles a single tear. Individual deaths, not just general sorrow.

In separate petals shed, each like a tear;
While from the quivering bough the bird expands
His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands
Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death drawn near.
All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air:

Petrarchan turn

Traditional sonnets pivot at line 9. Here the volta moves from death imagery (falling petals, fleeing bird) to consolation (reassuring eyes, rainbow promise).

The angel circling round her aureole
Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole:
While she, with reassuring eyes most fair,
A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere

Rainbow covenant

Biblical echo—God's rainbow after the flood promised no more destruction. The soul's rainbow promises survival beyond death's storm.

On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Sonnet's Extra Line

This is a 15-line sonnet—Rossetti added a line between the octave and sestet. The standard Italian sonnet has 14 lines (8 + 6), but Rossetti inserts line 13 ("A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere") to suspend the final image. It's a hinge that delays resolution, making you wait for the consoling rainbow.

The addition matters because the poem is about suspension between states—life and death, spring and winter, falling and promise. Fiammetta herself is caught mid-motion, shaking branches, petals falling, bird fleeing. The extra line embodies that hovering moment before certainty arrives.

Rossetti used this 15-line form in several sonnets written for paintings, including this one. He composed "Fiammetta" as an ekphrastic sonnet—a poem describing his own painting of the same title (1878). The painting shows a woman in a garden, and the poem translates visual details (angel, aureole, tree bole) into verse.

What "Gloom-girt" Does

"Gloom-girt" in line 2 means "encircled by darkness." The compound is Rossetti doing his medieval-revival thing—archaic diction that sounds like it came from Dante or Malory. But notice what it accomplishes: Fiammetta stands in spring growth ("Spring-flushed apple-growth") while simultaneously surrounded by gloom. She exists in both seasons at once.

This double-vision runs through the whole poem. The apple blossoms suggest spring, fertility, Eden—but they're falling apart, "sundered," torn from the branch. The bird expands his wings (life, flight) but he's fleeing a "quivering bough" (instability, fear). Even the angel is "shimmering"—you can barely see it, it's half-there.

The technical term is oxymoron, but Rossetti's doing something subtler than just pairing opposites. He's showing how beauty and death occupy the same moment, how spring contains its own ending. The woman reassures us with "eyes most fair" while standing as a "presage" (omen, warning). She's both comfort and prophecy.