ROSSETTI, Dante Gabriel, Featured Paintings in Detail (3)

ROSSETTI, Dante Gabriel
Featured Paintings in Detail
(3)

La Ghirlandata
1873
Oil on canvas
Guildhall Library and Art Gallery,
London

La Ghirlandata (detail)
1873
Oil on canvas
Guildhall Library and Art Gallery,
London

The Bride
1865
Oil on canvas, 80 x 76 cm
Tate Gallery, London

The Bride (detail)
1865

Monna Vanna
1866

Monna Vanna (detail)
1866

Venus Verticordia
1863 -1868
Oil on canvas, 98 x 69.9 cm
Russell Cotes Art Gallery and
Museum, Bournemouth

Venus Verticordia (detail)
1863 -1868
Oil on canvas, 98 x 69.9 cm
Russell Cotes Art Gallery and
Museum, Bournemouth

A Sea Spell
1875-1877
Oil on canvas, 111.5 x 93 cm
Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge,
Massachusetts

A Sea Spell (detail)
1875-1877
Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge,
Massachusetts

Bocca Baciata (Lips That Have Been
Kissed)
1859
Oil on canvas, 32.1 x 27.0 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Bocca Baciata (Lips That Have Been
Kissed) (detail)
1859
Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The Day Dream
1880
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The Day Dream (detail)
1880
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Proserpine
1874
Tate Britain, London

Proserpine (detail)
1874
Tate Britain, London

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Proserpine
1874
The figure represents Proserpine as Empress of Hades. After she was conveyed by Pluto to his realm, and became his bride, her mother Ceres importuned Jupiter for her return to
earth, and he was prevailed on to consent to this, provided only she had not partaken of any of the fruits of Hades. It was found, however, that she had eaten one grain of a
pomegranate, and this enchained her to her new empire and destiny. She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal fruit in her hand. As she passes, a gleam
strikes on the wall behind her form some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment the light of the upper world; and she glances furtively towards it, immersed in thought.
The subject was suggested to the artist by William Morris, whose wife Jane was the model for this and many other works by Rossetti. Her own life bore similarities to that of the
captive goddess, and the painting could be seen as much a portrait of Jane as a representation of Proserpine. By all accounts, Mrs Morris was not a happy woman and Morris was a
cold husband. Jane enjoyed an intimate relationship with Rossetti which spanned decades.
Various symbols contained in the painting include the pomegranate, which signifies captivity and marriage, and the incense-burner, the attribute of a goddess. The decorative quality
of the picture is accentuated by the curve of the ivy spray, a symbol of clinging memory, which is echoed in Proserpine's arm and the rich folds of drapery.

La Ghirlandata
1873
The title of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's La Ghirlandata is translated by the Pre-Raphaelite artist's brother, William Michael, as 'The Garlanded Lady', or 'The Lady of the Wreath'.
Largely interpreted as an embodiment of love and beauty, Rossetti depicts a woman playing a harp as two angels surround her, enclosed by vivid flowers - including honeysuckle
and roses - and luscious green foliage which melds into the green of her dress. The main model is Alexa Wilding, who worked with Rossetti frequently.

The Bride
The subject of this painting, the power of woman's beauty, is inspired by the biblical Song of Solomon. The bride pulls back her veil to reveal her beauty and engages the viewer
with her blue eyes and full red lips. The rich colours and exotic fabrics in which she is clothed heighten her sensuality: her intricate leather headdress is Peruvian, while her dress is
made from Japanese kimono fabric.
The model for the bride was Marie Ford, whose beauty Rossetti greatly admired. The virgin bridesmaid in the left foreground was modelled by Ellen Smith, the woman on the right
by the artist Frederick Sandys's gypsy mistress Keomi.
The young black boy was intended to add a note of exoticism, but his dark face also provides an effective contrast with the pale complexion and auburn hair of the bride. Rossetti
encountered the boy by chance at the door of a hotel and added him as an afterthought, replacing a mulatto girl. He may also have been inspired by the figure of the black servant in
Manet's Olympia, which he saw during a visit to Manet's studio in November 1864.
The painting has a number of symbolic readings: the boy offers up roses, a symbol of love, but also a Christian image indicating someone who is matchless or without peer. The
virgins hold lilies, normally a symbol of purity, but their red colour suggests passion and physical love. The composition is extremely shallow, and the attendants crowd around the
bride, providing a rich and sumptuous setting for her jewel-like beauty.

Monna Vanna
This is one of a series of decorative pictures of beautiful and sensual women, which Rossetti produced in the mid 1860s. The model is Alexa Wilding, who sat for some of Rossetti's
best-known works, including La Ghirlandata and The Blessed Damozel .
The spiral pearl clasp in her flowing auburn hair and the red coral necklace appear frequently in Rossetti's pictures of women. Along with the sweeping movement of her arms, the
green rosettes on her shoulder and the floral earrings, they serve to accentuate the picture's circular composition. The heavily embroidered white and gold drapery is used in other
pictures of this date, including Monna Rosa . The enormous sleeve recalls Raphael's portrait of Giovanna of Aragon in the Louvre.
Rossetti originally called the picture Venus Veneta, and intended it to represent 'a Venetian lady in a rich dress of white and gold, - in short the Venetian ideal of female beauty' .
After the picture was finished he changed the title to Monna Vanna, denoting a 'vain woman', a name taken from Dante's Vita Nuova, which Rossetti had translated in October 1848.

Venus Verticordia
1863 -1868
The title, 'Venus, turner of hearts', derives from Latin literature, where it designates the role of Venus, goddess of love and beauty, in turning women's hearts towards virtue.
However, Rossetti interpreted it in the opposite sense, to mean turning men's hearts away from fidelity. The roses, honeysuckle, apple and nude figure all contribute to the
theme of love and sexuality.
In the later 1860s a number of English artists began to experiment with the nude figure. Rossetti's painting, designed as early as 1863, was among the first in this remarkable
Victorian revival of the nude.

A Sea Spell
1875-1877
A Sea-Spell was painted for Rossetti’s patron Frederick Leyland, a ship magnate who owned a large number of paintings by the artist. Rossetti first planned to illustrate lines
from Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan — “A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision once I saw” — but the subject was ultimately derived from his own poem, inscribed on the frame
that he designed. The musician’s “lashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell” of the siren, a mythological figure whose voice lures sailors to their deaths.
Although sirens were traditionally described as women with the bodies or heads of birds, Rossetti’s enchantress retains her human form, surmounted by an avian headdress.
The artist evokes all of the senses in his lushly claustrophobic canvas; the siren’s dreamy mien suggests that she, too, has been bewitched by the music and by the fragrance
of the surrounding flowers. The subject of the dangerous woman, or “femme fatale,” flourished in the nineteenth century.

Bocca Baciata (Lips That Have Been Kissed)
1859
Rossetti here depicts his mistress, Fanny Cornforth, gazing at the viewer or perhaps at her own reflection in a mirror. The sensual sitter represents an idealized beauty, while the
artist’s use of luxurious decorative elements invites sheer visual enjoyment.
Inscribed on the back of this panel is a line from a sonnet by the fourteenth-century Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio: “Bocca baciate non perda ventura, anzi rinova come fa la luna”
(The mouth that has been kissed loses not its freshness; still it renews itself even as does the moon).

The Day Dream
1880
The sitter for this painting was Jane Morris, the wife of William Morris, who often posed for Rossetti. At the time this was painted Rossetti was involved in an illicit love affair with
Jane. He shows her sitting in the branches of a sycamore tree and holding a sprig of honeysuckle. This sweet-smelling climbing plant symbolised the bonds of love for the
Victorians, and Rossetti may have included it here as a subtle reference to the relationship between artist and model. Rossetti was also a poet, and the title relates to his poem of
the same name which ends:
She dreams; till now on her forgotten book
Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.

English poet and painter, son of an Italian political refugee in London. He was taught drawing by
Cotman and after a few unsuccessful months with Ford Madox Brown he went to Holman Hunt in
1848. Under Hunt's guidance he painted his first major work, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, the first
picture exhibited with the initials of the PRB (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood). His adherence to the
tenets of the Brotherhood was, however, very shortlived.
His subjects were drawn mostly from Dante and from a medieval dream-world also reflected in his
verse, e.g. The Wedding of St George, or Arthur's Tomb. Many of these were highly-elaborated
watercolours. In 1850 he met Elizabeth Siddal, who also posed for Hunt and Millais, and from 1852
onwards she developed under his inspiration into an artist of poetic and neurotic intensity. His
best work was produced during the years of their uneasy association. They married in 1860; in
1862 she died of narcotics and he became virtually a recluse and eventually a chloral addict.
In 1857 he was concerned (with Morris, Burne-Jones and others) in the decoration of the Oxford
Union and he did one painting directly on a white-washed wall. It perished immediately. His poor
technique and his use of studio assistants are obvious in many of his later works. From the 1860s
Elizabeth Siddal's place was taken by Morris's wife Jane, and he painted many versions of the full-
lipped sultry beauty which came to be associated with his name.

ROSSETTI, Dante Gabriel, Featured Paintings in Detail (3)

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