Isabella and the Pot of Basil
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT, 1868
Itself derived from Boccaccio’s Lisabetta, John Keats’ Isabella mirrors the Decameron original - the tale of its titular protagonist, centred around the murder of her lover at her brothers’ hands. Though his body is hidden, his spirit remains long enough to inform her of the tragedy; leading Isabella to exhume the body before burying its head in a pot of basil, which she spends the rest of her days caring for obsessively, convinced that Lorenzo’s voice still carries from the soil. The poem served as inspiration for many of the great Pre-Raphaelite painters; particularly William Holman Hunt, who immortalised his wife Fanny’s features as Isabella after she died during the painting’s creation.