16 cm × 31 cm (24 in × 12 in
Wikimedia Commons
Queen Eleanor is an 1858 oil painting by the Pre-Raphaelite
Group of English artists formed in 1848 to counter what they saw as the corrupting influence of the late-Renaissance painter Raphael. painter Frederick Sandys, portraying Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of King Henry II. It was exhibited at the Spring Exhibition of the British Institution in 1860, and is one of Sandys’ first depictions of the “dark, dangerous woman” popular in late 19th-century art and literature.[1][2]
The queen is reputed to have murdered Henry’s mistress, Rosamund de Clifford, known as the Fair Rosamund. Henry is said to have concealed his affair from Eleanor by conducting it within the innermost recesses of a complicated maze. Eleanor is depicted holding a poisoned cup and a dagger. The red cord in her left hand allowed her to find her way through the maze to Rosamund’s bower.[3]
The picture is now in the collection of the National Museum Cardiff, which purchased it from the Christopher Wood Gallery in 1981.[4]