Dante Gabriel Rossetti illustration was "The Maids of Elfen-Mere" (1855), for a poem by his friend William Allingham, and he contributed two illustrations to Edward Moxon's 1857 edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Poems" and illustrations for works by his sister Christina Rossetti. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Neither Burne-Jones nor Morris knew Rossetti, but were much influenced by his works, and met him by recruiting him as a contributor to their "Oxford and Cambridge Magazine" which Morris founded in 1856 to promote his ideas about art and poetry. In February 1857, Rossetti wrote
Portrait of a Lady Known as Smeralda Brandini Pourtalès Gorgier for 3,400 francs in 1865. Charles Augustus Howell bought it on behalf of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1867 at Christie's; Rossetti boasted that he had it for £20. It was bequeathed to the V&A with the collection of his patron Constantine Alexander Ionides, who had bought it from Rossetti for £315 in the 1880s. Dante Gabriel Rossetti refers to the painting in his comments on his poem "For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli": <poem> "What masque of what old wind-withered New-Year" "Honours this Lady?* Flora, wanton-eyed" "For birth, and with all flowrets prankt and pied" </poem> with his reference: