Resumen de Rossetti's 'Nativity' and 'The Seed of David'
The catalogue raisonne of paintings and drawings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti lists a water-colour of the Nativity produced in 1855 forJohn Ruskin, which has been thought to be a lost work.1 I shall argue that in 1856 it was converted into the central section of the water-colour sketch (Fig. 19) for The Seed of David, executed in oil for Llandaff Cathedral in Wales between 1858 and 1864 (Fig.20).2 I shall also discuss a hitherto unrecorded study for the composition in a British private collection (Fig.23). This drawing, although it has a provenance from friends of Rossetti, the artists Henry Tanworth Wells and Joanna Wells (nee Boyce), who owned a number of other works by the artist, has been overlooked in the literature.
