If you looked up the definition of "upper-class" in the dictionary, in all likelihood you might find Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Monna Vanna.

She is wealthy. She is sophisticated. She is unnecessarily accessorized with feathers. In this piece, Rossetti shows us ‘the Venetian ideal of female beauty.’ And he did so swimmingly. And who was this woman that so encapsulated Venetian beauty? Why, Alexa Wielding of course. This was the first portrait that Rossetti had Alexa sit for. When first approached by Rossetti, Alexa agreed to sit for him, but when the time came she stood him up because she thought that "sit for a painting" was a euphemism for sex. Then one day fate stepped in and Rossetti saw Alexa again from the window of his cab. He immediately got out and asked her to sit for him that afternoon. She agreed and Rossetti began paying her a weekly stipend not to sit for any other artists. Sneaky Rossetti. Surprisingly their relationship remained platonic, unlike many of Rossetti’s other models.

The woman that Alexa plays in this painting is Monna Vanna, a character from Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova, a 13th century book of poetry that Rossetti translated in October 1848. This painting is the first indication that the Pre-Raphaelites were selling out and catering to the mainstream. At the start, the Brotherhood wanted to show life as it was and not some idealized version. They would include all the ugly bits of their subjects. But obviously Monna Vanna wasn’t about to have wrinkles. Wrinkles are for poor people, not her! And that’s the way Rossetti liked it. He said that this painting was “probably the most effective as a room decoration that I have ever painted,” which is great if the superlative you’re going for is “most effective as a room decoration.”