Isabella and the Pot of Basil is an oil painting in the Pre-RaphaeliteGroup of English artists formed in 1848 to counter what they saw as the corrupting influence of the late-Renaissance painter Raphael. style by William Holman HuntEnglish painter (1827–1910), one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. (1849–1917), created in 1868. It depicts a scene from John Keats’ poem Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, showing the heroine Isabella caressing the basil pot in which she has buried the severed head of her murdered lover, Lorenzo. Keats’ poem was itself inspired by a story in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, written in about 1350.^[1]

In a letter Hunt wrote to his fellow artist Henry Wallis on 12 February 1868, he admitted that his treatment of Isabella owed much to Boccaccio, but for reasons of propriety did not wish to make this known publicly.^[1]

The story on which the painting is based tells of Isabella, who is in love with Lorenzo, employed as a clerk for her two brothers. But they want her to marry a high-ranking nobleman, so they decide to murder Lorenzo and bury his body in the forest. Lorenzo appears to Isabella in a vision, and tells her where to find his corpse. She exhumes his head and hides it in a pot of sweet basil, sustaining the plant with her tears. On discovering her secret the brothers remove the pot, leaving Isabella to wither and die of grief.^[2]

Hunt and his first wife Fanny married in December 1865, and the following year settled in Florence, where he began work on Isabella. But after Fanny’s death from miliary fever in December 1866, Hunt turned the painting into a memorial to his wife, and worked on it steadily in the following months. He returned to England in 1867, and finally completed the painting in January 1868.^[1]

The painting was sold, together with a smaller version, to the art dealer Ernest Gambart in November 1867, before either had been completed and before he had even seen the smaller version. Gambart paid 1,800 guineas, equivalent to about £225,700 as at 2024.^[1][a]Calculated using the retail price index.^[3]

The full-size version of Isabella and the Pot of Basil is currently in the collection of the Laing Art Gallery, in Newcastle upon Tyne, donated by Dr Wilfred Hall in 1952.^[4] The smaller version, about one-third the size of the original, was sold at auction in London in 2014 for £2.883 million, and is now in the hands of a private collector.^[1]

See also

• Isabella and the Pot of BasilOil painting by John William Waterhouse depicting a story in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. by John William Waterhouse