Paolo and Francesca

Adopted by Lady Emma Verey

Paolo and Francesca were adulterous lovers in Dante’s ‘Inferno’, part of his 14th-century epic poem the Divine Comedy. When the couple’s affair was discovered, they were murdered by Giovanni, Francesca’s husband and Paolo’s brother. Condemned to the Second Circle of Hell, the lovers were doomed to spend eternity in the black winds of the underworld.

Watts painted this subject four times over as many decades. In this final and most complete version, the exhausted lovers still hold each other tenderly.