Her longing for Angelo is suggested by her pose and the needle thrust fiercely into her embroidery. The stained-glass windows in front of her show the Annunciation, contrasting the Virgin's fulfilment with Mariana's frustration and longing. Millais copied the scene from the window of the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford. However, the heraldic design appears to have been his own invention. The motto 'In coelo quies' means 'In Heaven there is rest' and clearly refers to Mariana's desire to be dead. The snowdrop symbolises 'consolation' and is also the birthday flower for 20 January, St Agnes' Eve, when young girls put herbs in their shoes and pray to Saint Agnes to send them a vision of their future husband. It may also refer indirectly to John Keats's narrative poem 'The Eve of Saint Agnes', which, like Tennyson's 'Mariana', is also concerned with the theme of yearning.

The mouse in the right foreground is Tennyson's mouse that 'Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, | Or from the crevice peer'd about'. The miniature altar in the background, decorated with a small triptych, and a silver casket, may refer to Tennyson's other poem on the same theme, 'Mariana in the South', in which Mariana prays desperately to the Virgin Mary. Millais may have intended the picture to complement Holman Hunt's 'Claudio and Isabella' (1850, Tate N03447), a scene also taken from 'Measure for Measure'. But as a subject from Tennyson the picture acquired a certain topicality, since Tennyson was made Poet Laureate in November 1850.

Further reading: Leslie Parris (ed.), 'The Pre-Raphaelites', exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery 1984, reprinted 1994, no.35, pp.89–90, reproduced p.90. Elisabeth Prettejohn, 'The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites', London 2000, pp.11–13, reproduced p.10, in colour. Frances Fowle December 2000