rossetti's wife, elizabeth, died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862, possibly a suicide, shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. rossetti became increasingly depressed, and on the death of his beloved lizzie, buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with her at highgate cemetery, though he later had them dug up. he idealised her image as dante's beatrice in a number of paintings, such as "beata beatrix".