English: Marie Spartali Stillman, Dante at Verona, 1888. When first exhibited, this was accompanied by a quotation from Rossetti's poem of the same name:

[...] He comes upon
The women at their palm-playing.
The conduits round the gardens sing
And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
Where wearied damsels rest and hold
Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.
One of whom, knowing well that he,
By some found stern, was mild with them,
Would run and pluck his garment's hem,
Saying, 'Messer Dante, pardon me,'
Praying that they might hear the song
Which first of all he made, when young.

The song Dante made "when young" is the Vita Nuova, which induces a pensive mood in both poet and listeners. The scene is an imagined re-creation of a public garden in medieval Verona, to which Dante was exiled.