Poem written in the album of Emily Patmore (1824–62) in 1852, published in DP. Patmore was the first wife of Coventry Patmore (1823–96), who wrote about her in poems including The Angel in the House (1854); for the couple’s friendship with the Brownings, see L 3.231. RB describes how her ‘little head’, parted lips, ‘lithe neck’ and ‘fruit-shaped, perfect chin’ (1, 10, 11, 13) would work as an early Tuscan painting ‘upon a background of pale gold’ (2–3). In the more impressionistic, visionary 14–22 the massed angels of Correggio (inspired by his paintings in Parma) are imagined waiting ‘to see some wonder momently/Grow out … against’ this ‘pale ground of sky’. C&M 807 suggest that ‘A Face’ responds to the intense, even ‘idolatrous’ poetry of Coventry Patmore.