Technique: Watercolor
Showing posts with label Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Show all posts
11/26/15
7/29/15
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix
Date: c. 1864–70
Technique: Oil on canvas, 864 x 660 mm
Rossetti draws a parallel in this picture between the Italian poet Dante's despair at the death of his beloved Beatrice and his own grief at the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal, who died on 11 February 1862.
1/16/13
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The First Madness of Ophelia
Date: 1864
Technique: Watercolour on paper, 39.37 x 29.21 cm
8/30/11
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington
Date: 1868
Technique: Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 85.1 cm
This picture may have been designed simply as a toilette scene. Probably in 1866, Rossetti began to associate it with Lilith, the legendary first wife of Adam who deceived him before he met Eve.
The sonnet he wrote for the picture combines the two ideas by emphasizing the allure of Lilith's hair. Later this sonnet was called 'Body's Beauty', in opposition to 'Soul's Beauty', the sonnet associated with 'Sibylla Palmifera'.
'Body's Beauty'
Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
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6/25/11
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Pandora
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight
Date: 1878
Technique: Coloured chalks, 100.8 x 66.7 cm
In the Greek myth, the god Jupiter gave a casket to Pandora, a mortal woman, and forbade her from opening it. She took it back to earth and opened it, letting forth all evils into the world. Only Hope was left inside. The Latin words on the casket, 'Ultima Manet Specs' mean 'Hope remains last.' The face and figure type of Pandora are based on Jane Morris but this is not a portrait.
The meaning of the image is ambiguous. Is Pandora an evil femme fatale who ruins men by her disobedience? Or is she a heroic woman who defies the gods to take control of her own fate?
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3/31/11
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Astarte Syriaca
Manchester City Art Galleries
Date: 1875-1877
Technique: Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 183 cm
Even in near—modern times, Asherah, also known as Astarte, retained her grip on the Christian imagination, not least because of the fervent denunciations of the Old Testament prophets, known to every student of the Bible. Her image renewed its potency as a synibol of rebellion as late as the time of the Pre—Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828—82).
Rossetti’s painting Astarte Syriaca romantically evokes the divine power of women, within the context of the nascent pan—European Symbolist Movement, and can at the same time be read as a covert denunciation of patriarchal Victorian Christianity. The painting carries other messages as well. It is a near—portrait of Janey Morris, wife of Rossetti's fellow Pre—Raphaelite William Morris (1834—96), with whom Rossetti was conducting an adulterous affair. The two male figures placed symmetrically in the background speak of the goddess’s—and by implication Janey’s—power to ensorcell men. She is therefore both an incarnation of the goddess of love and the personification of the Fatal Woman.
One fascinating aspect of Rossetti’s image, and of the other, closely similar paintings he made at this time, is that he simultaneously exalts the power of women and condemns it. The same theme can be found spelled out explicitly in some of the poetry that Rossetti wrote.
Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon
Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen
Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon
Of bliss of the heaven and earth commune:
And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean
Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean
The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune.
Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel
All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea
The witnesses of Beauty's face to be:
That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell
Amulet, talisman, and oracle,
Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.
D. G. Rossetti
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12/31/10
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Raven: Angel Footfalls
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Date: c. 1848
Technique: Pen and brown ink on light-brown paper, 9 x 8 1/2 in.
The remarkable set of drawings illustrates Poe's The Raven. The series represents a defining moment in DGR's artistic life, both in literature and in art. There are four known illustrations by DGR of Poe's famous poem: an early (ca. 1846) chiaroscuro drawing, plus three later pieces (all ca. 1848) in a markedly different style: a pen and wash drawing on light-brown paper, another pen and wash (on light blue paper), and a pen and pencil drawing. All three of the later drawings are linear and sharply articulated, and they clearly relate to the same stylistic urgencies that led DGR to help in the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
That Poe should have been the occasion for this artistic change is both interesting and somewhat remarkable, for Poe is a key figure in the development of DGR's literary style as well. The second-order romanticism developed in Poe's imaginative writings, and explicated in essays like “The Poetic Principle” and “The Philosophy of Composition”, is recapitulated in DGR's work, where the key is primarily Dantean rather than (as in Poe) Shelleyan/Byronic.
DGR also made illustrations for two other Poe works, The Sleeper and Ulalume.
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Faust
The National Trust (Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton)
Date: c. 1846
Technique: Pencil, 9 1/2 x 9 3/4 in.
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12/30/10
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dantis Amor - Finished Study
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
Date: 1859 – 1860
Technique: Brown pen and ink and wash on paper, 240 x 250 mm
This is a study for the oil painting Dantis Amor which was painted in 1860 (!) as the middle panel of a cabinet for William Morris's Red House at Upton (now dismantled). The side panels represented 'Dante Meeting Beatrice in Florence' and 'Dante and Beatrice in Paradise'. The central panel painting 'Dantis Amor' is now in the Tate collection. The subject is a symbolic representation of Beatrice's death.
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