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| Venus Verticordia (detail) 1868 Oil on canvas Russell-Cotes Arts Gallery Museum Bournemouth, UK |
‘Most
people admire (Rossetti’s paintings) very much (…) –but (they are) still more
remarkable for gross sensuality of a revolting kind’[1]
wrote William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), commenting on Rossetti’s change of
style during the 1860s. This statement seems all the more surprising since Hunt
is known as the former ‘Brother’ of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), who was
also part of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Nevertheless, Hunt’s criticism
emphasises the peculiarity of Rossetti’s art and his overt eroticism. Rossetti’s late style is characterized by an obsession for portraits of female
figures. Rossetti’s female representations celebrate two particular
artistic types, from the ‘fair maidens’ to the ‘femmes fatales’.
The ‘fair maiden’
refers to the medieval ideal of courteous love, the maiden being a faithful
lady endowed with magical powers. The knight must revere her and accomplish
heroic deeds in order to become her sweetheart. In visual arts and in
medieval poetry, ‘fair’ may allude to light complexion and hair.
A femme
fatale, on the other hand, is an alluring, seductive woman ensnaring her
lover thanks to the irresistible desire she is able to convey. She uses her physical
attributes to entrap him. The great amount of fascination she exerted
on 19th century artists made her a stock character in literature and
art. Accordingly, Rossetti painted different ranges of fair maidens and femmes fatales by depicting well-known
heroines, his favourites being Beatrice, Queen Guenevere and Greco-Roman
goddesses. Still, he also drew his inspiration from contemporary life and his
models, who were either his friends or lovers. We shall then
try to identify if there is a specific Rossettian style as related to femininity, by stressing how the artist combines these types of ideal,
sometimes within the same painting.
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| Raphael, Madonna and Child, 1505 Oil on wood, 44 x 59,5 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington |
The Victorian ideal of beauty relied on two dimensions:
artistic and social norms. Artistic canons derived from what students from the
Royal Academy of London were taught: the imitation of High Renaissance
Old Masters. This type of emulation was particularly favoured by Sir Joshua
Reynols (1723-1792), founder of the Royal Academy of the Arts. R.A. students learned to paint according to the laws of perspective, from
the essays by Alberti and Italian theoricians, to balance their hierarchised
compositions with chiaroscuro and elegance of line. This had an impact on their
models’ depiction: they seemed idealised, despite the ‘reality’ of the sitters.
Raphael’s Mother and Child, for
instance, was the epitome of the masterpiece that R.A. students sought to copy:
the Virgin has this particular remote gaze one finds in other High Renaissance
paintings (see Michelangelo or Da Vinci’s representations of the same biblical
character), and the typical inclined pose of the head. Hair is tied up, the
shape of the face is perfectly oval, and her features are neatly balanced: the
nose stands right in the middle of her face, and the mouth is located exactly
half-way between the line of the nose end and the line of the chin.
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| Richard Regrave, The Governess, 1844 Oil on canvas, 71,1 x 91,5 cm Victoria and Albert Museum |
Rossetti and his fellow members
of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood criticised this artistic tradition for they
thought that the depictions of their contemporaries were stereotyped
imitations of those ideals, depriving the models of their authenticity. The
Victorian ideals of feminine beauty privileged petite women with tied up, brown hair, and lady-like, submissive
attitudes. Such representations could be found in the
drawings of popular magazines such as Punch,
but it was also immortalised by contemporary genre artists. In The Governess, Richard Redgrave
(1804-1888) emphasises the submission of the main character with her lowering
gaze. She epitomises the perfect Victorian woman, with her black dress and her
delicate looks.
 |
| Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, 1855 Watercolour on paper, 25,4 x 59,5 cm Tate Britain |
Rossetti’s women, on
the other hand, differ from the Renaissance Madonnas or the Victorian ideal of
meekness. They are characterised by flowing hair, large eyes and heavy eyelids,
Greek-like noses and full lips. He enhances the fleshy parts of the models like
the medieval poets focusing on one particular part of the woman’s body,
creating blasons. In Bocca Baciata, the
mouth is indeed the main interest of the painting, as is indicated in the
title. Almost at the centre of the picture, it attracts the viewer on account
of its glowing red colour, contrasting with the paleness of the face. Red
hair is another distinctive feature of Rossetti’s style. In this picture, the
painter represents Fanny Cornforth (1835-1906) – Rossetti’s housekeeper and
mistress - who actually had blond hair.
 |
| John Everett Millais, Ophelia (detail) 1852, Tate Britain |
It was Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862), Rossetti’s wife, model and pupil, who made red hair popular in the bohemian artistic circles of the time[1].
From his early drawings of her to the representations of other, fleshier women, Rossetti's style evolved. In the triptych above, Lizzie’s features are delicate and sensuous yet
childlike. This childlike aspect also appears in other pictures of the
P.R.B, especially in Millais’ painting. Still, the striking red hair motif in Rossetti's early depictions of Lizzie and later representations of other "femmes
fatales" with Lizzie’s hair reveal the blurring of the fair maiden ideal and the seductress within certain pictures. In Dante's Dream, Rossetti’s last oil on canvas, the painter had intially intended to depict Beatrice as Elizabeth Siddal. The lady is presented on her
deathbed, her reclining
attitude showing her in a position of weakness. Later on, when Rossetti decided to
complete his painting, he modified Beatrice’s features to make her look more
like Jane Morris, his main lover during the 1870s, after his wife had died.
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| Dante's Dream, 1871 Oil on canvas, 211 x 317 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
In Bocca Baciata, there still is that element
of ethereality to be found in early paintings; the common feature
of Rossetti’s portraits during the 1860s is the vacant stare of the models, who
seem to avoid looking directly at the viewer. This trait pervades the pictures
with an impression of melancholy, as if Rossetti created a poetic language that
suited to the mood of the sitter: women are represented in a self-contained
world, oblivious of any other exterior element. Lizzie’s depictions however possess
a morbid dimension. The P.R.B and especially Rossetti re-adapt the traditional
depiction of the red-head figure who was usually associated to traitors -such as
Judas- and prostitutes - such as Mary Magdalene.
 |
| Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Bocca Baciata, 1859 Oil on panel, 32 x 27 cm Boston Museum of Fine Arts |
Rossetti’s pictures were deemed as provocative, since he endowed the
beauty of unconventional heroines with nobleness and seduction. Firstly, he was careful to not to choose
professional models so the pictures could look more spontaneous. Lizzie Siddal,
Jane Morris, Fanny Cornforth and Alexa Wielding, apart from being acquainted to
the artist, were all from lower-class background than his. If Elizabeth Siddal was
remarkable thanks to her size, hair and eyes, Jane Morris was described as a
quiet person with a ‘dark and pale’ face, and a ‘Ionian Greek’ mien[1].
Rossetti’s women appear
as tall and massive on his portraits: the models almost fills the whole picture, leaving little space for
the setting. At a time when feminist groups started to gather to claim the same
rights as men, Rossetti’s representations of women might have constituted an
echo to this ‘New Woman’ type, which embodied a threat to political and social
life[1].
In many pictures, Rossetti’s sitters might be regarded as frightening
creatures: in Monna Vanna, the cold
stare of the protagonist and the glass heart around her neck show her as a
merciless figure.
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| Monna Vanna, 1866 Oil on canvas, 88,9 x 86,4 cm Tate Britain |
The sensuality of the
portraits is so conspicuous that it appeared as shocking to contemporary
viewers. Rossetti enhanced the
erogenous parts of the female body such as the mouth, shoulders, and hands[1]. William Holman Hunt was not the only
one to be appalled by Rossetti’s women. In 1871 Scottish writer Robert Buchanan
wrote an article about Rossetti, entitled The
Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr D.G. Rossetti, condemning the artist for his
‘weary wasting, yet exquisite sensuality; nothing virile, nothing tender,
nothing completely sane; a superfluity of extreme sensibility’.
By celebrating the
beauty of women that Rossetti actually knew, his portraits subtly mingle reality
and fantasy, creating complex ideals and myths around these fascinating figures. Rossetti worked with what he called ‘stunners’, that is, women who
caught his attention and were able to fascinate him, seduce and frighten him at
the same time. This type
of female beauty was described as a ‘union of strange and puissant physical
loveliness with depth and remoteness of gaze’[3].
Throughout Pre-Raphaelite literature, the stories of these stunners have been
mythified: successively, how he met and drew them, and the complex nature of
his relationships to them. This explains how art critics and biographers still
are fascinated with Rossetti’s love affairs that he incorporated in his
portraits, sometimes, the artist is even described as a saviour figure,
rescuing these women from their low-life condition. Besides, let us not forget
that, during the Victorian era, modelling was regarded as being a type of work
situated only a little above prostitution. Women who embraced this career made
quite a bold choice: they could expose themselves to the criticism of friends
and contemporaries. This might
explain why Rossetti was always careful not to paint his sitters in the nude
tradition, except in Ligeia Siren and
Venus Verticordia.
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| Found! 1853 Oil on canvas, 91,4 x 78,7 cm Delaware Art Museum |
Innovating with a highly personal style
enabled Rossetti to re-interpret the traditional genres of religious and
history painting. He then mixes various genres by combining portraits with
literary or modern-life inspirations. For instance, his depictions of the
fallen woman can be regarded as representations of the Modern Eve. Such is the
case with Found!, displaying Fanny
Cornforth in the role of the prostitute. Just as in Rossetti’s poem of the same
name, she is recognized by her former lover and shrinks out of shame before
him. The pose is unconventional for it is very awkward: her body is twisted
from the neck to the knees, and the line of the body contrasts the line of the
arms, directed towards the male protagonist. The impression of uneasiness is
reinforced by her expression, with her closed eyes and half-open mouth, almost
shown in profile.
Fanny Cornforth seemed to be
the perfect figure to embody the modern-life prostitute,
while Elizabeth Siddal was cast as the medieval queen and Jane Morris as the
evil temptress. Alexa Wielding, on the other hand, was often chosen to represent
the courtesan or the enigmatic sorceress. As a contrast
to Fanny Cornforth, Alexa Wielding, whom Rossetti noticed while walking in the
Strand in 1865, was chosen to embody more ethereal figures, on account of her
refined face. When Rossetti painted Lady
Lillith, Fanny initially sat for the picture, but the artist substituted
her features for those of Alexa, since the owner of the painting, Frederick
Leyland, considered the original too earthly[1].
 |
| Proserpine, 1874 Oil on canvas 61 x 125, 1 cm Tate Britain |
As a result, Rossetti cast his friends and lovers as heroines suiting their personalities. The
fleshiness and sensuality of the characters, overwhelmed by a dreamy quality,
thus pervades Rossetti’s pictures. For the artist, physical and spiritual types of love were intertwined. This
dimension is particularly relevant in the depictions of Jane Morris, which
become increasingly physical over the 1870s. In Proserpine,
the Greek line of the nose, the lips and the shape of the eyes are clearly
delineated, yet Jane Morris embodied an unattainable Goddess who is doomed to
live in the Underworld. The dark undertones is heightened through the cold hues of the painting, which are present through the mass of brown hair and the
blue-green dress. Significantly, Rossetti returned to oils in the 1860s, after
painting exclusively in watercolour or gouache during the 1850s. Oils enabled him to insist on the physicality of his models. The body of Jane Morris was so massive that it even appeared as masculine, especially in the
representation of her shoulders and neck. Rossetti could thus re-adapt the androgynous canon of Greek
statues.
Elizabeth
Siddal, on the other hand, was portrayed as more delicate and ethereal – her
first representations are made through drawing and watercolour, two mediums
highlighting the dreamlike dimensions of the pictures - even if Rossetti tried to represent his wife as a noble
queen. In the early 1850s, her individuality was already blurred by Rossetti’s
fantasy of her as Beatrice, Dante’s lover; while Rossetti fantasised himself as
the Italian poet. Lizzie’s portrait as Beatrice after her
death in 1862 presents the culmination of this blurring between reality and
fantasy. In Beata Beatrix, Rossetti
portrays her in the traditional position of religious ecstasy (one can think of
Bernini’s Saint Theresa) to
immortalise her through his art. The physicality of Lizzie’s body slips away as
the central protagonist is painted through a sort of haze that sets the surreal
aspect of the scene into relief. Accordingly, Lizzie’s eyes are closed, transelike,
while her clothes and hands are over-shadowed. The artist threw Lizzie’s face
into relief by painting a golden halo around it and through a game of
contrasting hues: on the whole, the character’s face attracts the viewer’s
attention, for Rossetti used a lighter tone than for the rest of the painting,
yet, once more, he enhances the erotic parts of her body; the shadows under the
neck and near the eyelids are made more apparent, just as the dark tones of the
lips. The overall effect of grace also comes from the distinctive lighter
draperies standing against the darkness of the dress.
 |
| Gustave Moreau, Tattoed Salomé (detail) 1876, oil on canvas Gustave Moreau Museum |
Grace and form are part of what
is considered as the ‘moods’ of Rossetti’s female portraits. The recurrent, decorative patterns
of Rossetti’s late style are distinctive features of the Aesthetic style.
Aestheticism in the UK paralleled the emergence of the Symbolist movement in
Europe, and it aimed at representing ‘art for art’s sake’. The choice to depict
women as connected to the senses was favoured by fin-de-siècle artists, to present art as a pure sensual form[1].
Symbolists such as Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) and Gustave Moreau (1826-1898)
obsessively portrayed Femmes fatales especially
when they embodied the stereotype of the fascinating Oriental character. In
Moreau’s numerous versions of Salomé,
the eponymous character is eroticised through her jewels, which point at the
naked parts of her body.
 |
| The Beloved, 1865 - 1866 Oil on canvas, 82,5 x 76,2 cm Tate Britain |
Similarly,
The Beloved presents an
Oriental-like composition, in which space is built through the presence of
several women, forming a whole decorative pattern. Besides, this painting is
noticeable for the focus on jewels and flowers, elements that appear in many
Rossettian paintings of the 1860s and 1870s. The design of women’s features,
jewels and flowers produce an overall dreamy atmosphere, but the picture’s
appealing to the senses is made through colour and the presence of musical
instruments, which are characteristic of Aesthetic canvasses. The connection
between colour and music is particularly striking in what can be considered as
Rossetti’s ‘symphonies of colours’. In The
Daydream, the symphony in blues and greens is created thanks to the various
shades of green in the background and on the dress of Jane Morris. With the
careful rendering of the draperies echoing the limbs’ movements and Jane’s eye
colour, Rossetti explores diverse tones of blue, to produce a whole effect of
harmony responding to the green tones of the leaves. This effect is even more
poignant in La Ghirlandata. The
dark greens are subtly rendered to throw the warm colours of Alexa Wilding’s
hair and mouth into relief. The key of the painting lies in the contrast
between the dark tones of greens and the warm oranges, yellows and reds. The
artist, by catching women plunged into rêverie,
meant to appeal to the viewer’s senses: sight, sound and touch.
 |
| La Ghirlandata, 1873 Oil on canvas, 124 x 85 cm Guildhall Gallery, London |
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| The Daydream, 1880 Oil on canvas, 158,7 x 92,7 cm Victoria and Albert Museum |
The complexity of
Rossetti’s representation of female beauty lies in the multiple influences he
draws from contemporary life and literature on the one hand, and in the tension
between the physicality and the dreamlike quality of the portraits on the other
hand. By intertwining real life and artistic issues, physical and artistic love
and by depicting sensuous women, Rossetti is able to create a type of art that
overcomes moral categories. Rossetti’s
portraits are aimed at catching woman in an ethereal moment, thus creating
a true religion of beauty. However, what may seem surprising is that this
highly personal vision of the female body, that was controversial when Rossetti
was still active, became quite influential to the development of the Aesthetic
Movement, partly because of Rossetti’s distinctive personality and way of
painting. Indeed, he was revered by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), and his
female type influenced Burne-Jones’ work even after he died. Since Rossetti
paints subjective portraits of friends or lovers cast as literary or mythical
heroines, remarkable through their distinctive features, it may be fair to talk
about a Rossettian artistic type, which flouted the canons of Victorian female
beauty.
[1]
In Nicoll, John. Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
London: Studio Vista, Cassell and Collier Macmillan, 1975, p.125
[1] See Lucinda Hawksley, ‘The Red-Hair Model’ in Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, London: Andre-Deutsch, ch.1
[1] See William Michael Rossetti about Jane Morris in Dante Gabriel Rossetti, His Family Letters with a Memoir, 1885, I, p.199: ‘Her face was at once tragic, mystic, passionate, calm, beautiful and gracious-a face for a sculptor and a face for a painter-a face not at all like that of an Englishwoman, rather of an Ionian Greek. It was not a face for that large class of English people who only take to the ‘perfect’ and not to the beautiful and the superb. Her complexion was dark and pale, her eyes a deep penetrating grey, her massive wealth of hair gorgeously rappled (…)’.
[1] ‘Instead of primarily focusing on the face and the head, Rossetti often included more of the torso (…) sensualizing to a hitherto unheard-of degree the erogenous parts of the body’. Susan P. Casteras, Pre-Raphaelites Challenges to Victorian Canons of Beauty, The Huntington Library Quaterly, vol.55, n°1, p.29
[3] F.W.H. Myers, ‘Rossetti and the Religion of Beauty’, Cornhill Magazine, February 1883, p.220
[1] Jennifer Lee, ‘The Forgotten Muse: Alexa Wilding’, The Pre-Raphaelite Society Newsletter of the United States, Number 19, Spring 2008
[1] For the connection between Rossetti and the Aesthetic movement, see Tim Barringer, ‘Pre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes’ ch.5, in Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, pp.135-155
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