Isabella; or the Pot of Basil

This was always among my husband’s favorite paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, and one that I’d always found terribly ghoulish. While he told me the story behind the painting, it did little to change my feelings about it until I recently stumbled upon the artistic inspiration for the piece, Keats poem, “Isabella; or the Pot of Basil.” Now that painting is my favorite among the many that illustrate the dramatic sorrow of Isabella.

 John White Alexander, 1897

The poem tells the story of a young woman who falls in love with a young man who works for her two brothers.  Since her brothers are determined to marry her off in order to increase the family fortune, they kill her unsuitable suitor. She discovers their treachery, exhumes her lover’s head, and plants it in a pot of basil which she waters with her tears.  You can read the entire 63 stanza poem, published in 1820, here and below, see some of the many paintings the tragic story inspired, particularly among the Pre-Raphaelite painters.

Sir John Everett Millais, 1849

XXI.

These brethren having found by many signs
What love Lorenzo for their sister had,
And how she lov’d him too, each unconfines
His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad
That he, the servant of their trade designs,
Should in their sister’s love be blithe and glad,
When ’twas their plan to coax her by degrees
To some high noble and his olive-trees.

William Holman Hunt, 1867

LII.

Then in a silken scarf, - sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully, -
She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover’d it with mould, and o’er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

 John William Waterhouse, 1907

LIII.

And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.

John Melhuish Strudwick, 1879

LX.

Yet they contriv’d to steal the Basil-pot,
And to examine it in secret place:
The thing was vile with green and livid spot,
And yet they knew it was Lorenzo’s face:
The guerdon of their murder they had got,
And so left Florence in a moment’s space,
Never to turn again. - Away they went,
With blood upon their heads, to banishment.

LXIII.

And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,
Imploring for her Basil to the last.
No heart was there in Florence but did mourn
In pity of her love, so overcast.
And a sad ditty of this story born
From mouth to mouth through all the country pass’d:
Still is the burthen sung - «O cruelty,
«To steal my Basil-pot away from me!»