Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)
'Portrait of Maria Zambaco'
About 1869
Coloured chalks
Museum no. CAI 1149
Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

Maria Zambaco (born Cassavetti) was a first cousin of Constantine Ionides. She was a sculptor, but is better known as a model for other artists. Her features also appear repeatedly in the paintings of Rossetti's friend Edward Burne-Jones, whose affair with the tempestuous Zambaco in the late 1860s came close to wrecking his domestic and artistic existence.