[1] Patron John Mitchell of Bradford commissioned the painting from Rossetti in 1863, after seeing a chalk drawing by the artist of the model whose body was eventually used for Venus Verticordia.

[3] In his ‘Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868’ Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote that "The great picture of Venus Verticordia has now been in great measure recast; the head is of a diviner type of beauty; golden butterflies hover about the halo of her hair; alight upon the apple or the arrow in her hands; her face has the sweet supremacy of a beauty imperial and immortal; her glorious bosom seems to exult and expand as the roses on each side of it.

The Christian iconography is at odds with the halo surrounding Venus, as it the cardinal sign of holiness, and furthermore in the case of female figures, purity.

[11] A poem Rossetti wrote to accompany the painting indicates his own interpretation of the term – as Venus turning men's hearts from fidelity to lust.

[12] Well known art critic and long-time supporter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood John Ruskin strongly objected to the sexual tone and imagery in this painting.

Letters between the two colleagues and friends indicate their falling out, and Ruskin's concerns with the imagery in Venus Verticordia after seeing it in Rossetti's artist studio.