LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's National Portrait Gallery launched a public appeal on Friday to buy a unique picture of iconic 16th century English poet John Donne.
The oil on panel portrait inscribed ``Oh Lady Lighten My Darkness'' shows Donne with piercing eyes and full lips emerging from the darkness, his lace collar suggestively undone.
``This fascinating portrait of the great writer is a compelling image and a painting of outstanding significance,'' National Portrait Gallery director Sandy Nairne said announcing the appeal to raise 1.6 million pounds ($2.85 million) to buy it.
The painting by an unknown artist is thought to date from around 1595 when the womanizing Donne penned one of his most famous poems ``To His Mistress Going to Bed'' from his erotic Elegies series.
It has been in the collection of the same family since it was bequeathed to them in Donne's will in 1631.
Owner Lord Lothian welcomed the gallery's attempt to raise funds to buy the picture over the next six months.
``While it is very sad to part with such a picture, I am delighted that, funds permitting, it is going to the National Portrait Gallery, where its importance as a unique portrayal of one of Britain's literary giants can be more widely admired and enjoyed,'' he said.
Donne is hailed as one of the most important figures in English literature and penned immortal lines such as ``No man is an island'' and ``For whom the bell tolls.'' He led a torrid life.
Born in 1572 into a rich Roman Catholic family at a time of high anti-Catholic sentiment, he was trained by Jesuits and went to both Oxford and Cambridge universities before studying law at two famous London Inns of Court -- Thavies and Lincoln's.
It was at this time that he began writing while rubbing shoulders with Elizabethan literary greats like Ben Jonson.
He sat in parliament but then tumbled from grace in 1601 by secretly marrying the 17-year-old daughter of the keeper of the Tower of London who promptly had him locked up.
Eventually reconciled with the irate father, Donne scraped a living as a lawyer for several years before renouncing his religion and entering the Anglican order where he became one of the greatest preachers of the era.
``John Donne is one of the greatest writers in the English language, and very few contemporary portraits of him survive,'' Poet Laureate Andrew Motion said.
``It's innate qualities make it indispensable. Broodingly suggestive of Donne's intellectual figure as well as his witty sensuality, it is also a picture of great intrinsic beauty and the bewitching evocation of an age,'' he said.
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