Ileana Marin

Beata BeatrixPre-Raphaelite Studies

Marco Lugli Editore

© 2001 Ileana Marin 2001 Marco Lugli Editore - Firenze - Italia www.luglieditore.com lugli@luglieditore.com

ISBN 88-88219-09-9

Ileana Marin

Beata BeatrixPre-Raphaelite Studies

Marco Lugli Editore

Ileana Marin is born in Constantza Romania in1963. She read the Romanian –English at theFaculty of Letters – University of Bucharestbetween 1986 and 1991. Since her graduation,she has been teaching comparative literature atOvidius University Constanta, first as a teachingassistant, then as a lecturer. The challengingdoctoral thesis - Narrative Dimensions in theWorks of the Pre-Raphaelites - which shedefended in 2000, is a comparative studyconcerned with the Raphaelites’ work of theItalian Renaissance and its nineteenth centuryinfluence on the English Pre-Raphaelitemovement. She later extended her research to theAmerican response and contribution to the Pre-Raphaelite movement.She has also published numerous articles and haswritten three books that are forthcoming atprestigious publishing houses. She has beendeeply involved in the life of the Faculty ofLetters both as Chancellor, for over five years, andas Associate-Dean, a position that she has beenholding for over two years now.

Contents________________________________

Introductions 9

I The Phantasmal Language in Rossetti's Translations 12

Pre-Raphaelite Subjet 13

Translation - cognitive activity 14

Translation - semiotics activity 19

Notes 24

II Poetry, or Individual Reading and Painting or Public Sharing 26

The Reception of Poetry 27

The Reception of Painting 29

Picture versus Sonnet 31

The Icon-I in "Body's Beauty" 32

The Sign I in "Soul's Beauty" 37

Notes 41

III The (Self)Portraits of Elisabeth Siddal 43

Pre-Raphaelites on Siddal 43

Siddal as a Pre-Raphaelite artist 58

Siddal on Siddal 61

Notes 65

IV Burne-Jones: Re-visitation of the Renascent Italian Patterns Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelange 67

Notes 80

V The Poetics of Detail in the American Pre-Raphaelite Painting 81

Notes 94

Figures 96

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I n t r o d u c t i o n

Beata Beatrix is one of the most famouspaintings Dante Gabriel Rossetti did. He beganworking on Beata Beatrix before Siddal’s deathin 1862 and completed the portrait of ElizabethSiddal from memory in 1870 as a memento.This picture represents a turning point inRossetti’s style: the narrative enclosed insymbolic figures would prevail over theexplicitly expressed narrative, almost alwaysbased on narrative texts.That is why Beata Beatrix seems to me asuggestive title for the volume, which containsfive studies that aim to define Pre-Raphaelitismas an aesthetic category. It stands for thedissemination of the Italian patterns in theEnglish poetry and painting of the nineteenthcentury, primitive aspect of the spiritualisedfigures, and uppermost, the endless hermeneuticprocess generated by complex relationshipsbetween pictorial image and literary text. Inspite of the minutely painted details specific tothe Pre-Raphaelite paintings, their profoundsense is constructed by subtle narrativetechniques. Narrative becomes a compositionalstrategy that captures the viewer’s sight thesame way it captures the reader’s attentionwhen reading a story. In fact, the Pre-Raphaelites’ art, especially Rossetti’s, invites itsreceptor to combine the two channels ofreception: reading and viewing. This dialogicsituation also complicates the narrative thread:

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the literary text, which the pictorial imageevokes, is always a challenge for anotheroriginal work of art. At the same time, thepainting illustrates a double series ofidentifications: Elizabeth Siddal was perceived asan extension of Beatrice by Dante Gabriel whilehe himself considered an extension of DanteAligheri. Their works, both literary andpictorial, reveal the prolongation of art intohistory and the insertion of real life intoartefacts. Muse, model, beloved and/or wife werethe roles Elizabeth Siddal experienced in realityunder the pressure of culturally induced dramatispersonae: Beatrice, Ophelia, Leah, St.Katherine, Delia. As regards Dante Gabriel, poetand painter, translator from Italian into English,he created a world in which phantasms cometrue. Finally, phantasms mastered the artist’sthoughts and substituted the real object. BeataBeatrix was such a phantasmal image thathaunted Rossetti’s life and art. Havingtransgressed the limit between fiction and non-fiction, anecdotal aspects of life becamenarrative elements in the picture. Thus, Rossettielaborated his own series of icons that identifiedhis works and his influence elsewhere.Burne-Jones is actually Rossetti’s disciple. Closeaffinities with his master’s style such as thesame type of hermetism, spiritual postures,concern with female beauty could be followed inhis entire work, but their classical mythic miseen scene differ.The fame of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as

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an artistic association crossed the ocean andinspired the American painters who wereinterested exclusively in the poetics of detailand made it their own stylistic feature.Beata Beatrix has lately become a Pre-Raphaelite artistic and commercial tokencharacterized by a large circulation andpermanent contextualizing. Not only the Pre-Raphaelite painters would reproduce Siddal’secstatic expression and reconsider its hermeticmeaning but also their followers: Symbolists andArt Nouveau artists, to name the mostimportant ones.

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C H A P T E R I

T h e P h a n t a s m a l L a n g u a g e i n R o s s e t t i ’ s T r a n s l a t i o n s

In the chapter Sign vs. Text1, UmbertoEco quotes Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva inorder to prove that signification is locatedexclusively in the text. He also argues that thetextual capacity to manipulate pre-existing sign-functions depends on their previous possibilityof producing different texts.

As regards the most representative Pre-Raphaelite works one cannot say that the locuswhere signifying practice takes place is only thepoetic Pre-Raphaelite text. Even in the case inwhich poems, either epic or lyric, do not have apictorial materialization they make the readerconstruct mentally the visual image of the poemby means of specific literary devices2. As theyalmost always refer to another literary subjector pictorial representation, Pre-Raphaelite textsfunction as an artificial artistic memory foreither the image in the picture (the real art ofmemory)3 or the piece of literature they startfrom. The themes of the Pre-Raphaelitepainting are literary to a great extent, as well.Thus, the medieval or renascent pictures andliterary sources represent referents of thesecond order for Pre-Raphaelite art. The poetictext becomes a phantasm, a mental image in

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the process of the mediated pneumaticknowledge, transferred in a pictorial image tofacilitate or support the interpretation of thepoem.

Pre-Raphaelite Subject

Dante Gabriel Rossetti inherits hisfather's capacity of interpreting the world as auniverse of signs that lead the interpreter toanother series of signs which, in its turn,signifies something else. While his fatherCharles Gabriele Rossetti has got lost in semiosiscommenting Dante Alighieri's DivinaCommedia as an all-inclusive parable ofmorality, medieval history, theology and art,Rossetti the son tries non-programmatically tolimit this semiosis by an ingenious artisticprocedure; he encloses literature into paintingand painting into literature. Either his literaryor pictorial works reflect Rossetti’s culturalItalian background, more precisely the medievalpatterns in poetry and the medieval and laterrenascent technique in painting.

In his twenties, Dante Gabriel Rossettitranslates Dante's Vita Nuova from Italian intoEnglish, and the thirteenth century Tuscan andSicilian poets: Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia,Dante da Maiano, Cecco Angiolieri da Siena,Guido Orlandi, Gianni Alfani, Carnino Ghiberti.According to George Steiner:«Poetic translation plays a unique role inside thetranslator's own speech. It drives inward.

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Anyone translating a poem, or attempting to, isbrought face to face, as by no other exercise,with the genius, bone-structure and limitationsof his native tongue.»4

In Dante Gabriel Rossetti's case, the twolanguages may be considered native and histranslations reveal the confrontation betweentwo poetic realms. In search of his own poeticlanguage he penetrates another cultural traditionand makes it his own.

Translation - cognitive activity

Analysing Rossetti's translations one cannotice the setting up of a new enunciativeinstance round which an enunciative levelseparated from the enunciative level of theinitial Italian text revolves. This newenunciative instance of the translated Englishpoem will be called enunciative instance ofthe second order and the enunciative instanceof the initial Italian poem will be calledprimary enunciative instance.

The second enunciative level withspecific marks (brackets, the first-person deixis)represents the metatextual matrix of the initialtext, a reading that controls and directs its ownreading. The English version seems to be a newtext with two enunciative levels. In this newtext, the ‘Sign-I’ is the means by which the I ofthe initial poem can be retrieved and the ‘Pre-Raphaelite I’ can be controlled.

Rossetti proposes an English enunciate5

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equivalent to the Italian enunciate; the firstsends back to the initial one, but, at the sametime, the English equivalents for thecharacteristic concepts of Dolce Stilnuovoproceed from the Old English and occur in theneighbourhood of the marks of this foreignenunciative instance.

I shall apply this scheme to one of themost literal translations Rossetti made: GuidoGuinizzelli's canzone Al Cor gentil rempairasempre amore, translated as Of the gentle heart;nevertheless, his print is evident. Rossetti'sversion reduces the two specific attributes of Sunand Fire, heat and light, respectively, to onespecific attribute: light for sun, heat for fire.This remark leads the reader to the conclusionthat Rossetti tries to express a more abstractidea than Guinizzelli did: sun is the first celestialbody in the hierarchy and reflects the divineessence. In the last stanza the relevant marks ofthe enunciative instance of the secondorder appear clearly: brackets, and the firstperson possessive within the brackets, elementsabsent from the Italian poem:

«Donna, Deo mi dirà: «Chepresomisti?»,sïando l'alma mia a lui davanti.

«Lo ciel passasti e'nfin a Mevenisti

e desti in vano amor Me per semblanti:ch'a Me conven le laude

e a la reina del regname degno,

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per cui cessa onne fraude».Dir Li porò: «Tenne d'angel sembianzache fosse del Tuo regno;non me fu fallo, s'in lei posi amanza».»6

«My Lady, God shall ask, ‘Whatdared'st thou?’

(When my soul stands with all her actsreview'ed);

‘Thou passed'st Heaven, intoMy sight, as now,

To make Me of vain love similitude.To Me doth praise belong,

And to the Queen of all the realm ofgrace

Who endeth fraud and wrong’.Then may I plead: ‘As though fromThee he came,

Love wore an angel's face:Lord, if I loved her, count it not myshame.’»7

Having read Rossetti's original poems itis easy to notice that he uses brackets wheneverhe wants to draw attention to the limits of thetext. This device is recurrent in his own poemsto mark the distance between the instances ofthe texts. The poem The Blessed Damosel isinterrupted four times by four stanzas written inbrackets that function as a medieval refrain thatchecks the audience's attention. These fourintrusions of the enunciative instance of thesecond order break up the text that otherwise

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bears no mark of the primary enunciativeinstance recognizable as sign:

«The blessed damosel leaned outFrom the gold bar of heaven;

[…]Albeit, to them she left, her day

Had counted as ten years.(To one, it is ten years of years.

...Yet now, and in this place,Surely she leaned o'er me- her hair

Fell all about my face...Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.

The whole year sets apace.)or:

And laid her face between her hands,And wept. (I heard her tears.)»8

The text seems to be a dialogue betweentwo enunciative levels:- the first is the locus where the enunciativeinstance does not manifest itself as sign but canbe recognized as an organizer of the text and ofthe stylistic isotopies;- the second can be located in the text andrevolves around the signifier I.

Taking into account the definition ofthe poetic subject as an intentional mark inwhich the poetic I is projected, further in mypaper, I shall name the first enunciative levelprimary poetic subject and the secondenunciative level poetic subject of the secondorder. The poetic subject of the second

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order becomes the first commentator of theprimary poetic subject from an exterior pointof view, from outside the story that the texttells. This divided poetic subject is assumed byRossetti whenever he rewrites and paints DolceStilnuovo.

Coming back to the translationmentioned above the same dialogue is to be seenbut in a rudimentary form. One might say thatthe better the translation the less visible thetranslator's I is. This sort of translation seemsto anticipate what T. S. Eliot writes about EzraPound's translations:«...good translation like this is not merelytranslation for the translator is giving theoriginal through himself, and finding himselfthrough the original».9

The peculiarity of this type of translationconsists in the fact that the translator's I doesnot hide behind the primary I but appearsdetached from the latter, indicated by graphicsigns: brackets, and the specific signifiers, as theverse «(When my soul stands with all her actsreview'd)» proves. The English version keepsthe idea of the Italian line but adds a doubleambiguity: the Lady in the poem reflects thevirtues and the angelic appearance of the VirginMary; the poetic I assumes and transcribesGod's I.

I consider my soul in the brackets as amark of the enunciative instance of thesecond order which does not simply translatethe Italian words «l'alma mia». According to the

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Dolce Stilnuovo theory of Love, the Lady inthe song, a phantasm that dominates theactivity of the soul, is the object of poeticLove. Guinizzelli precedes and anticipates DolceStilnuovo with this very song that can beconsidered the first ars poetica of DolceStilnuovo. As long as man is soul in front ofGod, and his soul is absorbed entirely by aphantasm, the phantasm will function as man'ssoul. The subject without soul is no more asubject due to the fact that phantasm annuls it.At the same time, the subject overlaps itsphantasm which is the image of the other, ofthe beloved Lady. Metaphorically speaking, thesubject has already become its own object ofLove. Rossetti's translation adds to the mysticof Love expressed by the Italian poem, themystic of poetry making the poetic subject theobject of the text.

As cognitive activity, the text changesfrom figurative to abstract and finally changesthe relationship between subject and object:cognitive subject becomes its own object ofresearch.

Translation - semiotic activity

In his preference for the decorativeaspects of light, on the one hand, and for thepoetic subject of the second order, on the other,I read his option for an ‘Icon – Subject’. In fact,Rossetti's translations represent not only asimple cognitive activity but also a semiotic one

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as long as the translated texts exemplify aninterpretative doing of the ab que text and aproductive doing of the ab quem text10.

Having analyzed the interpretativedoing in Guinizzelli's poem, I shall nowcomment upon the productive doingconsidering the translation of Vita Nova. Themost productive stimulus for Rossetti is DanteAlighieri's work and personality. It is necessaryto throw light on the Dolce Stilnovistconception of EROS since this theory - based onsight, mirroring, and eye as vehicle of Love, - isthe starting point for the materialization of thepoetic text in a concrete painted image. Love isnot only a recurrent theme both in DolceStilnuovo and in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's art butalso a creative principle. Dante Alighieri definesit in Purgatorio (XXIV, 52-57):

"I'mi son un, che quandoAmor mi spira, nolo, e a quel modoche' e' dita dentro vo significando"«O, frate, issa vegg'io» diss'elli, «il nodoche'l Notaro e Guittone e me ritennedi qua dal dolce stil novo ch'i' odo!»11

Dante Alighieri's lines evidenced the new typeof relationship established between the poeticstyle and the source of inspiration which wasLove. Love is the uttermost authority dictatingthe poems to Dante Alighieri, who, in his turn,becomes a text generator for Rossetti.

Eros, either physical or spiritual, may be

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converted into intellectual contemplation: onthe one hand, Eros that is not under thedomination of the soul is similar with the senseperception; on the other hand, Eros is thevehicle between soul and body. The spirit(pneuma) is consubstantial with the stars, andthat is why one of its most relevant attributes inthe Dolce Stilnuovo poetry is celestial. Celestialspirit, sensus interior, or phantasia, transformsthe messages brought by senses into phantasmseasily perceived by the soul/anima. Otherwisethe soul is not aware of the exterior sensibleworld.

Soul and body are inapt to communicatewith a non-congenial entity. These twocategories of Eros express themselves inappropriate languages: the soul uses a spirituallanguage whose signs are phantasms; the bodyappeals to gestural, musical, verbal languagewhose signs are audible and visible, but, sooneror later, all of them become phantasms whenrecorded by intellect. I draw attention to theabsolute primacy of soul over body and theprimacy of its phantasmal language over theword.12

The Dolce Stilnuovo imposes thiserotic/ phantasmal theory in poetry: poetsdescribe the penetration of the woman's imageinto man's spirit through the eyes. Havingtranslated Dante Alighieri's New Life, DanteGabriel Rossetti succeeds in mastering the codeof phantasmal discourse and in rendering thephenomenology of Love. From a statistic point

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of view, the most translations Rossetti made arefrom Dante or Dante is the central figure in thesonnets and songs translated by Rossetti from:Giovanni Quirino, Cino da Pistoia, GuidoCavalcanti, Dante da Maiano, Cecco Angiolieri,Giovanni Boccaccio.

If Love may be considered a textgenerator for Dante, Dante Alighieri, in histurn, becomes a text / painting generator forDante Gabriel Rossetti. Dante Alighieri's poeticformula is taken up as a model in House of Life,The Blessed Damosel, e.g., while events inDante's life make up poetic themes in otherpoems: Dante at Verona, On the Vita Nuova ofDante, Dantis Tenebrae.

His paintings have the same subject:Dantis Amor, Dante drawing an Angel on theFirst Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice,Paolo e Fracesca, Beata Beatrix, Dante'sDream. Thus, translations from Dante representa productive and an interpretative doing inRossetti's poetry and art.

Whatever the Dolce Stilnovist elementsare, they enter the Pre-Raphaelite text asgraphic signifiers13, textual components. Thepoetic subject is captured in language alongsidethe chain of signifiers. Acts, emotions,thoughts, desires, perceptions of the Subjectrecuperate themselves at the level of signifiersand the relationship among them. As soon asthey are expressed in language they are no moreconsubstantial with the Subject but withLanguage14.

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In this respect, one can notice that thePre-Raphaelite artistic language is based on thetwo aspects: literary and pictorial, proceedsfrom the translation exercise Rossetti made atthe beginning of his career.

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N o t e s

1 Eco, Umberto, Semiotics and the Philosophy of

Language, Indiana University Press, Bloomington,1984, p. 19.2 Pearce,L.,in Woman Image Text discusses in thechapter seven images produced by appropriate

metaphors.3 Culianu, I.P., Eros et magie à la Renaissance, 1484,

Flammarion, Paris, 1984.4 Steiner, G. ed., The Penguin Book of Modern Verse

Translation, Middleesex, 1966, p. 27.5 Greimas, A.J., Courtés, J., Semiotica DizionarioRagiondo della teoria del linguagio, Casa Usher,Firenze, 1986, p.123-124.6 Marchese, R., Grillini, A., Scrittori et opere 1 Dalleorigini al Quattrocento, La Nouva Italia, Firenze,1990.7 Rossetti, D.G., Poetry and The Drama, Everyman's

Library, London, 1930, p.178.8 Kermode, F., Hollander, J., The Oxford Anthology ofEnglish Literature, v.II, Oxford University Press,London, New York, Toronto, 1973, p.1406-1409.9 Eliot, T.S., Introduction to Pound: Selected Poems,

London, 1928, p.13.10 Greimas, A.J., Courtés, J., Semiotica DizionarioRagiondo della teoria del linguagio, Casa Usher,Firenze, 1986, p. 36511 Marchese, R., Grillini, A., Scrittori et opere 1Dalle origini al Quattrocento, La Nouva Italia,Firenze, 1990, p. 158.12 Culianu, I.P., Eros et magie à la Renaissance,

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1484, Flammarion, Paris, 1984.13

Agosti, S., Critica della testualità , Il Mulino,Bologna, 1994, p.357-373.

14 Idem.

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C H A P T E R I I

P o e t r y , o r I n d i v i d u a l R e a d i n g a n d P a i n t i n g o r P u b l i c S h a r i n g

The sonnets “Body's Beauty” and“Soul's Beauty” were initially written for twopictures Rossetti did in the 60's: Lady Lilith [oilon canvas, 31,1/2 x 32 inches, now exhibited inDelawere Art Museum, Wilmington] and SibyllaPalmifera [oil on canvas, 37 x 32 inches, nowexhibited in Lady Lever Art Gallery,PortSunlight]. Then they were included in the cycleThe House of Life of which the first 50 sonnetswere buried together with Elizabeth Sidall in1861 and exhumed in 1870, when Dante GabrielRossetti decided to publish the poems.

He actually juxtaposes literature andpainting - in fact, transfers the unlimitedhermeneutic process of the poem to the picturewithin the frame that encloses the polysemy ofwords in a unique image with a uniquesignificance. This attempt proves to be illusive,since painting and text mirror each other,generating an endless self-reflectiveness. Thetwo artistic manifestations stand for parallelspecular surfaces that deepen the perspective,reveal the true nature of Rossettian art.

As regards the ideal reception Rossetti

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projected for his sonnets and paintings, I shalltry to analyze the historical facts that lead to aninteresting hypothesis.

The Reception of Poetry

Most of his drawings, ink or pencilsketches, and water colours depict ElizabethSiddal - Lizzie, Guggum, Gum, etc. - who seemedto be the ideal reader of Rossetti's poems. Shewas portrayed while reading a volume1

melancholically or attentively.Taking into account the point of view

Fritz Nies affirms in his book Imagerie de lalecture2 works of art contain heuristicindications about literary reception. Twofamous drawings present her as an initiatedreader: she leaned against a pile of thick booksthat stands for her literary background (a similarpile is placed in front of the Virgin in TheGirlhood of Virgin Mary, 1849, suggesting that“her soul is rich”3) and the book she was readingcould be seen by the viewer. The graphics of thewritten lines, rhythmically interrupted byblanks, suggests the form of a poetic text. In theother drawing Siddal is again visually comparedwith the Virgin. The typical image with theopen book on the reader's knee belongs to themedieval iconographical tradition. Seated saints,numbers of the clergy, emperors and kings hadthe privilege to be portrayed in this position;

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the only female figure accepted among themwas the Virgin. Drawing Siddal, the same nobleand saintly circumstance, both a poetess and apaintress herself, Rossetti identified her withThe Virgin Mary and made her apt toread/understand his mystical poetry.

Unfortunately Siddal died on 11thFebruary 1862 of an overdose of laudanumbefore Rossetti published his original poems in avolume. Hall Caine told the episode minutely inRecollections of D.G.Rossetti:

“The poems he had written, so far asthey were poems of love, were chiefly inspiredby and addressed to her. At her request he hadcopied them into a little book presented to himfor the purpose... He spoke to his dead wife as ifshe heard, saying, as he held the book, that thewords it contained were written to her and forher, and she must take them with her, for theycould not remain when she had gone. Then heput the volume into the coffin between hercheek and her beautiful hair, and it was... buriedwith her in Highgate Cemetery.”4

This fragment points out the importance Siddalhad for Rossetti as a unique and perfect readerduring her lifetime. In Iser's terms, sheparticipated in the process of interaction: Siddalversus Rossetti's text. Asymmetry between thereader and the text is balanced in this very case:Siddal filled all “the gaps and the constitutiveblanks” with her/Rossetti's projections. As long

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as she was intellectually trained by DanteGabriel, she became a female alter-ego forRossetti, and obviously her literary or pictorialprojection did not contradict Rossetti's. ForSiddal his text did not provoke “continuallychanging views”; on the contrary, she assumedthe unique Pre-Raphaelite view. Siddalrepresented the hypostasis of the culturallyemancipated female public, the mirror of thecreative power of male artists. The dichotomymale poet - female reader that functioned at themiddle of the nineteenth century supposed acertain poetic strategy. Trying to piece together those early poemsfrom memory, Rossetti found himself unable todo it. In 1869 he decided to accept thedisinterment of the manuscript and in 1870 thevolume was published. Another 51 sonnets wereadded to The House of Life, and among them thetwo mentioned above. Having appeared thecycle, the two sonnets became a constitutivepart of it. Nobody reading The House of Lifeasked about the corresponding pictures. At thattime, they belonged to their buyers and only fewcould enjoy them.

The Reception of Painting

Rosseti problematized the relationshipbetween painting and literature, experimentingwith all possible combinations: he illustrated

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narrative poems; scenes from Shakespeare'splays; scenes of Dante's life or work; hecomposed sonnets for famous pictures signed byBotticelli, Leonardo, Mantegna, etc; hecomposed sonnets for his own pictures; finally,he painted the sonnets in his pictures. Thiseffort was significant for the interrelation art-poetry that demanded a different process ofreception. The usual context for the receptionof the painting during the Victorian age were thepublic exhibition and the private studio. Insteadof large and crowded art galleries where he lostcontrol over his works, Rossetti preferred therestricted circle of his friends and buyers as well,already prepared to face his canvas. Thelegendary man “who never exhibited after hisinitial Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 1849”5 andcould not stand “the effect of rancorouscriticism... that he resolved never again toexhibit in public, and he adhered to thisdetermination to the end...”6 was the onlypainter conscious of the power that art criticshad over the audience. Having noticed this perilat the very beginning of his career, Rossettialmost always refused permission to exhibit hisworks as he emphasized in a letter to WilliamGraham:

“Pardon this long-standing mood ofreticence but the position of an Artist at myage, and who has preserved hitherto one rule ofnon-exhibition needs the greatest

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circumspection as to any step in the otherdirection. I consider that much depends for meon the privilege of retaining control over thepublic production of my picture.”7

Thus, Rossetti limited the number of viewers:patrons, buyers, friends who could admire hisworks in his or their own studios. Painting wasprotected by this limited access againstmisreading; painting was no longer shared withthe others; painting was contemplated inprivacy. In order to prevent inconvenientcritical articles, no large exhibition could beorganized during his lifetime, although Rossettidisseminated his aesthetic ideas to important artcritics such as F.G. Stephens, W.M. Rossetti, J.Ruskin. Changing the status of two artisticphenomena, Rossetti deliberately introduced asort of connectability8 between poem andpicture. As he was concerned with theirinterrelationship and supervised carefully fromthe distance the process of reception, it iscertain that he was aware of devices that enabledhim to change the common situation ofreading/viewing.

Picture versus Sonnet

Mention should be made that Rossettipainted “Body's Beauty” and “Soul's Beauty” in1866 and 1868, and wrote the correspondingsonnets before publishing the volume of poetry.

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These two sonnets translate into a lyrical formthe pictorial syntax of the pictures. In fact, thejuxtaposition picture and sonnet annuls theframe between these two artistic manifestationsand facilitates the dialogue between them:picture becomes lyrical while poetry becomespictorial and assumes two distinct voices. Bothpoems and pictures prove the dichotomy of thepoetic subject: that I shall call the ‘Icon I’ andthe ‘Sign I’. These parts of the poetic Icorrespond to two different categories ofreceptor (reader and viewer) and two differenttypes of reception (private and public). It is alsoimportant to notice that the iconicity alwaysconstructs a female instance while the linguisticsign covers a male one.

The Icon-I in “Body's Beauty”

Meyer Schapiro defines the pictorialsign - iconic sign - as an image (icon) of anexistent referent outside the system of thepicture. The iconic sign is a concept ofrepresentation, the support for therepresentation painting. This sign does notrepresent reality but [one of the mimetic imagesof reality; Kristeva considers that it functions asa vehicule between the world and the humanlanguage and defines it as “un simulacre - entre -le monde - et - le – langage”9. In its turn, thepicture representing something (reality or text)

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is a structured code. This code starts asignificant process which reminds the viewer ofthe artistic convention he should take intoaccount. The picture Lady Lilith (1868) is asimulacrum of phantasm that the text attemptsto propose (figure 1). The poetic text, in itsturn, becomes a phantasm, and, at the sametime, transfers the pictorial image in anekphrasis in order to facilitate or support theinterpretation/reception of that portrait.

According to Pollock: “The pictureindeed plays with mirrors and gazes. Lilith isrepresented captured by her own image in themirror which contains a look at the viewer.”10

Lilith, the first witch that weaves her spell andenchants the snake, then Adam, illustrate theequation Magic is Eros. In fact, Eros causes theattraction among things, and this is consideredto be a magic technique.11 The spell, the web,magic plants (rose, poppy), “sweet tongue” arethe means by which Lilith creates a network toensnare her object of Love which in the mythare the snake and Adam. Her attitude in thepicture is relevant, and there are two importantelements that are missing from the poem:Lilith's gaze and the mirror. Only consideringthe picture, one can say that the real object ofLilith's love is her own image. She iscontemplating herself in the mirror andprobably practises the effects of her magic onherself.

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Lady Lilith is a magic manipulator; sheis able to direct the fantasy to be immune fromLove, Good and Truth or any other exteriorelement. In order to manipulate the others, themagic manipulator has to be independent, andthus avoid becoming an instrument controlledby the others. First, the sonnet describes an actof pure perception (to see) where the signifier Iis absent. In The sign as difference Eco,following Saussure admits that:

"the elements of the signifier are setinto a system of oppositions in which [...] thereare only differences. [...] From a metaphysicalperspective, it may be fascinating to see everyoppositional structure as based on a cognitivedifference which dissolves the different terms.Still, in order to conceptualize an oppositionalsystem where something is perceived as absent,something else must be postulated as present, atleast, potentially. The presence of one elementis necessary for the absence of the other.”12

Body’s Beauty

(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve),Of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, it is toldThat, ere the snake’s, her sweet tongue could deceive,And her enchated hair was the first gold.And still she sits, young while the earth is old,

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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 whereIs he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scentAnd 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 neckbentAnd round his heart one strangling golden hair.”

The poetic subject is materialized in theimage the sonnet creates, the image in whichthe I projects itself. This ‘Icon–I’ appears inthe picture as a self-sufficient image thatobliterates Lilith's sight towards the otherbeauties around her. Her “body's beauty” was, isand will be the absolute object of magic and Erossince she looks at her own image in the mirror.The viewer of the picture may suppose thatsome of the magic elements reflect in themirror, too. Her hair stands for web and spell,roses for Love, poppies for spell, her ownportrait for “Body's Beauty”. The specularsurface offers the possibility of the reflectedbeauty to communicate with the ‘signifier I’ inthe mirror but it does not materialize as a sign inthe picture or in the sonnet.

To a larger extent than the text, thesymmetry in the picture depicts Lilith's hair and

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the branches of the tree. The landscape in theframe of the mirror is a natural background thatfunctions in the same way as the brackets in thepoetic text: it represents a metavisual matrix ofthe initial Eden, that controls and directs theone’s entire reading of the picture. The sameanalogy between hair and leaves (see the lineswithin brackets from the Blessed Damosel)appears in the painting. The frame of themirror is the limited painted space in which theabsence of the ‘signifier I’ is present.

The ‘Icon–I’ has no signifier, butreflects itself into the image that hides it behindthe hand-mirror in the painting. Thus, this typeof I projects itself into a painted image. Thephysical Eros symbolized by Lilith manifestsitself as sense perception: everything in thesonnet is visual perception.

This physical Eros needs the ‘Icon–I’ tobe expressed, either in a poetic manner, or by anelementary ekphrasis , or in a pictorial one. Thepresence of the ‘Icon – I’ focuses on thecorporality described by the sonnet andillustrated by the picture. Through the ‘Icon–I’Eros declines its active principle and receives acontemplative aspect as long as the viewer ofthe picture contemplates it and meditates uponthe image created by the sonnet and thepainting.

In fact, only the viewer of the picture,who is also the reader of the sonnet, is the

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receptor of artistically created connectability.This complex artefact, even exhibited in apublic gallery, makes its receptor experience thepoem publicly by means of the picture itaccompanies and the picture in the solitude of apersonal intimate reading of the sonnet.

The Sign I in “Soul's Beauty”

In this text, the ‘Sign-I’ is the means bywhich the ‘Icon-I’ of the first poem can beretrieved and the Pre-Raphaelite I can becontrolled. In this sonnet the signifier I ispresent: “I saw / beauty enthroned”; “I drew it[her gaze] in as simply as my breath”. Theimage in the picture is the image which the‘Sign-I’ declares to have seen and drawn. Soul'sBeauty is “hieratic and static”, her gaze has nosensible object. Contemplating her own image inthe mirror, Lilith is looking at herself as at anouter image belonging to the sensible world.Sibylla Palmifera is gazing melancholically, buther look is inwardly oriented.

Sibylla Palmifera (figure 2) could be theallegorical figure of the soul: “I am an image,Chiaro, of thine own soul within thee. See me,and know me as I am.” (Hand and Soul).Intellectual Beauty is the virtue of Queen ofHeaven, Madonna Intelligentza, or DonnaAngelicata. One of the ornaments behindMadonna Intelligentza13 is the Blind Cupid, the

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sign of inferior soul characterized by irrationalpassion. Cupid is blindfolded and that is why hecannot play the role of the erotic/magicmanipulator. In the picture there are twoantithetic decorative elements: Cupid - symbolof Love, and the skull - symbol of Death, whichappear in the first lines of the sonnet:

Soul’s Beauty

Under the arch of Life, where love and death,Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I sawBeauty enthroned; and though her gaze struckawe,I drew it in as simply as my breath.Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,The sky and sea bend on thee, - which can draw,By sea or sky or woman, to one law,The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.This is the Lady Beauty, in whose praiseThy voice and hand shake still, long known totheeBy flying air and fluttering hem, the heatFollowing her daily of thy heart and feet,How passionately and irretrievably,In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

Cupid, roses and poppies are ornamentsof the bas-relief and although they are carved instone in a fixed, immutable attitude, they appearvivid. Looking at the painting attentively, onecan notice the two distinct levels: of the bas-

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relief in the background and of Sibylla Palmiferadetached from the background and lacking itscorporeal attributes. This stands for the ideathat she is conceived as the icon of purespiritual love, source of the inner fire cast outby her glittering eyes. Ignoring the symbols ofthe mortal imperfect realm, she becomes agenerator of spiritual light. Sibylla Palmiferacircumscribes the semantic field of enlightment.The painter meant her to have fascinating eyesso that they should penetrate deeply into themind of the beholder. The instrument offascination is precisely her spirit reflected byher sight. Sibylla Palmifera could be a hypostasisof the divine beauty through spiritualknowledge. As she consumes the subject, shedemands it to make her the unique image for theSpirit's eyes. The desperate need of the subjectto retrieve a certain form of visual existence issatisfied by mastering the imaginative facultyand the possibility to produce and perceive theBeauty of the sensible world.

The poetic rossettian subject creates theportrait of a lady who holds in her right handthe palm, an instrument of writing. She is a sortof enunciative instance that writes the sonnet“Soul's Beauty”. The ‘Sign-I’ in the sonnetcorresponds to the palm in the picture.According to Jung,14 palm means eternity,victory, soul. The graphic ‘Sign-I’ is the resultof Sibylla Palmifera's writing. In the sonnet she

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projects the subject's spirit into Signifier I.Whenever the ‘Sign-I’ appears in the text assignifier and in the picture as iconic sign, the‘Icon-I’ is embedded in the poem / picture. Thesonnet represents a text that overtextualizes thepicture. There are two distinct solutions DanteGabriel Rossetti offers:1. the text does not narrate the story in/of thepainting but it narrates the image of the story(to narrate means to describe the Subjectminutely)‘Icon-I’;2 . the text itself is embedded in he storyin/of the painting (to paint means to write)‘Sing-I’.

This aspect reveals the degree ofabstraction specific for icon, on the one hand,and sign, on the other. Rossetti's sonnets forpictures are verbal complementary works thatdouble, repeat and support the visual code. Hispoetic language is deictic, as its signs refer to acertain object: the image created by narrativemeans. The iconic sign becomes reflexive assoon as it represents the first level of readingthe poetry. The icon has a poetic dimension: itceases to be specific only for a traditional visualart, as poems were written in the ekphrasistechnique and constitute another type of visualart. In this context the visual becomesdiscursive, while the verbal becomes iconic,combining their specific channels of reception.

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Notes

1 Surtees, V., Rossetti’s Portraits of E. Siddal,Scholar Press, Oxford, 1991.2 Imagerie de la lecture. Exploration d'un patrimoinemillénaire de l'Occident PUF, Paris, 1995.3 Rossetti explained the subject and symbolism of The

Girlhood of Virgin Mary in the two sonnets thataccompanied the picture at the Free Exhibition. Thisline is quoted apud. Pre-Raphaelites, ed. Leslie Parris,Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1996, p. 64.4 apud. Evelyn Waugh, Rossetti: His Life and Works,

Duckworth, London, 1975, first edition 1929, p. 111.5 The Rossetti-Leyland Letters, apud. Alicia Craig

Faxon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, London: PhaidonPress, p. 19.6 Hunt, W.H., Pre-Raphaelitism, vol I, p. 204.

7 Doughty, O., Wahl, J.R., Letters of Dante Gabriel

Rossetti, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, vol. 4, p.1634-35.8 “connectability of the schemata” is defined by Iser,

Wolfgang, in The Act of Reading. A Theory ofAesthetic Response, The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, Baltimore & London, 1994, p. 186.9 Kristeva, J., Le langage, cet inconnu, Seuil, Paris,

1981, p.309.10 Pollock, G., Vision and Difference: Feminity,Feminism and the Histories of Art, Routledge,London, 1991, p.144.11

Culianu, I.P., Eros et magie à la Renaissance, 1484,Flammarion, Paris, 1984.12

Eco, U., Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language,

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Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1984, p. 23.13 Panofsky, E., Essais d'iconologie, Gallimard, Paris,1967, p.151-185.14 See Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant,Dictionnaire des symboles. Mythes, rêves, coutumes,gestes, formes, couleurs, nombres, Robert Laffont,Paris, 1969.

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C H A P T E R I I I

T h e ( S e l f ) P o r t r a i t s o f E l i z a b e t h S i d d a l

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall is the famousDante Gabriel Rossetti's beloved, discovered byWalter Deverell in a milliner's shop between theend of 1849 and the beginning of 1850. Hergracious and spiritualised features, red-hairedaura, elongated forms made her the mostinteresting model of the Pre-Raphaelite group.During the first years of the Brotherhood sherepresented the ideal image of an angelichieratic figure. Her recurrent portrait is theemblematic figure for the entire movement andshe still is - together with Jane Morris - theeffigy of the Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Pre-Raphaelites on Siddal

Nevertheless, her name is notmentioned in The P.R.B. Journal that WilliamMichael Rossetti wrote in order to record themain artistic events from May 1849, Tuesday15th, to January 1853, Sunday 23 to Saturday29 . In the entry from Friday 29th March 1850,“Miss Love” could stand for Elizabeth Siddal,who is said to be the other model for the Ecce

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Ancilla Domini! as Rossetti was looking for ared-haired model:

“Gabriel painted at the feet and arm ofthe Angel from White. He has Miss Love to sitfor the Virgin's hair, and is also repainting thehead entirely.”1

The conventionalised relationship between thePre-Raphaelite artist and his model defines boththe status of the active scrutinising viewer - thepainter - and the status of the viewed passiveobject - the model. Having considered Siddal inappreciations expressed in ekphrasis as if shewere an object fixed in an immutable reflectionof beauty, Walter Deverell described her in1850:

“what a stupendously beautiful creature Ihave found. By Jove! she's like a queen,magnificently tall, with a lovely figure, a statelyneck, and a face of the most delicate andfinished modelling. [...] She has grey eyes andher hair is like dazzling copper.”2 WilliamMichael Rossetti also recalled her in hismemories in 1895:

“She was a most beautiful creature, withan air between dignity and sweetness, [mixedwith something which exceeded modest self-respect, and partook of disdainful reserve]: tall,finely-formed, with a lofty neck, and regular yetsomewhat uncommon features, greenish-blueunsparkling eyes, large perfect eyelids, brilliantcomplexion, and a lavish heavy wealth of

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coppery-golden hair. [...] She seemed to say –‘My mind and my feelings are my own, and nooutsider is expected to pry into them.’ That shehad plenty of mind is a fact abundantlyevidenced by her designs and water-colours andby her verses as well. Indeed, she was a womanof uncommon capacity and varied aptitude.”3

In the early Pre-Raphaelite pictures shemodelled for Viola in Walter Deverell's TwelfthNight; for Sylvia in William Holman Hunt'sValentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus; forOphelia in John Everett Millais's Ophelia; forboth Beatrice and Francesca in Dante GabrielRossetti's Dantis Amor, Beatrice Denying HerSalutation, Giotto Painting the Portrait ofDante, Beata Beatrix, and Paolo e Francescarespectively.

Certainly she met their artisticexpectations, experiencing for the first time inthe group the effects the reversed classical mythof Pygmalion had on a woman. Having refinedthe statue to perfection, the Cypriot sculptorfell in love with his own ivory work of art andasked Aphrodite to breathe life into his statue inorder to make her his wife; the Pre-Raphaelitespolished/modelled a human being according totheir livresque and artistic perspective andcaptured each detail of the real woman intoprecisely elaborated object of art. In her articlePre-Raphaelite Women Elizabeth Leeconsiders that:

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“In art and in life, some of the Pre-Raphaelite woman felt pressure to abandonhumanity to become an archetype. They weredreams coming to life in paints, and it was thisliving dream which the artists could not help butfall in love with.”4

In fact, all her pictorial roles are characterisedby spiritual values: innocent purity, abstractvirtues, contemplative life, and religiosity. Asregards her contribution to Ophelia, art criticsconsider that she assumed that hypostasis as ifshe acted the corresponding part inShakespeare's play. Her experience of posing forMillais seems to be transferred into a suggestivepoem entitled A Year and a Day. Gradually shebecame the exclusive model for Rossetti, whoinitiated her in the arts he mastered himself:writing and painting.

Most of Rossetti's works of the 50'sdepict Elizabeth Siddal: the catalogue Rossetti'sPortraits of E. Siddal5 contains severaldrawings that portrayed her as an ideal readerthat emotionally responded to the text. Duringthat period she became an artist herself who wasable both to write a poem and to paint a pictureunder Dante Gabriel supervision who directedher exclusively to the primitive style of themedieval age. Between 1857 and 1858 shedecided to attend the Art School in Sheffield andin Derbyshire, but even after that period, shecontinued to mirror the creative power of the

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male artist and behave as his emulatingcounterpart. From the reception theory pointof view the dichotomies: male poet - femalereader, male painter - male/female viewer (cf.Chapter 2) were changed into another series ofdichotomies in this very case: female poet -male reader (as the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were the only readersof Siddal's poetry), female painter - (hostile)male viewer. In fact, there was a singleopportunity for Siddal to exhibit her paintingsin public in 1857 in the Russell Place Pre-Raphaelite salon. Although an evidently hostileattitude towards her works was not recorded, thereason for which Moxon did not introduceSiddal's drawing for an engraving on The Lady ofShalott in the Tennyson edition he published in1857 is not known.

“The other day Moxon called on me todo some blocks for the new Tennyson. Theartists already engaged are Millais, Hunt,Landseer, Stanfield, Maclise, Creswick,Mulready, and Horsley. The right names wouldhave been Millais, Hunt, Madox Brown, Hughes,a certain lady [Elizabeth Siddal], and myself.”6

The fragment of Rossetti's letter addressed toWilliam Allingham on 24 January 1855indicates the names of the artists selected byMoxon to illustrate his edition. AlthoughTennyson accepted Siddal's version and rejectedHunt's version for The Lady of Shalott, Moxon

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finally preferred the latter.Anyway her constant admirers were the

members of the Pre-Raphaelite group and JohnRuskin, whose esteem she gained in 1855 whenhe offered to buy all her works. Rossetti andRuskin supported and encouraged her artisticefforts to become an authentic artist. As thePRB had ceased to function as a medieval guildin which each member had to contributeanonymously to the others' works, and thepreliminary meetings of the CyclographicSociety founded in 1848 to analyse from acritical point of view the preparing drawings ona certain theme were suspended, Rossetti sharedthis medieval ideal with Elizabeth Siddal. Theyboth worked in the same studio, paintedtogether transferring pictorial motifs,compositional schemes, and narrative sequencesfrom each other's canvas in a continuousintertext. Art historians have evidenced severalexamples of intertextuality between Siddal -Rossetti: The Weeping Queens (Rossetti'sdrawing for engraving was inspired by herdrawings on the Tennysonian theme), theposition of the angel in her Saint Cecily and theAngel was transferred into Dante Gabriel'sdrawing with the same subject; and vice versaRossetti - Siddal: ladies' green dress in the groupof Beatrice from Rossetti's picture BeatriceMeeting Dante at a Marriage Feast, Denies HimHer Salutation (1852) is borrowed by Siddal in

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her watercolour Clerk Saunders (1857).Their close friend, the poet Algernon CharlesSwinburne affirmed:“Gabriel's influence and example [were] notmore perceptible than her own independenceand freshness of inspiration.”7

There are other cases in which no art critic hasbeen able to indicate the intertext (according toKristeva's definition the intertext is the literaloccurrence of a partial or entire text intoanother), since one of them did not artisticallymaterialise his/her pictorial patterns underhis/her signature, accepting that the other (thealter - ego) technically objectified her/hissuggestion.

They also painted together, forexample, Sir Galahad at the Shrine of the HolyGrail, signed EES INV. EES & DGR del. toindicate the fact that Elizabeth Eleanor Siddalinvented the composition and Elizabeth EleanorSiddal and Dante Gabriel Rossetti did the wholework. Under such circumstances Siddal (was)trained as the most Rossettiean painter of thegroup.

Rossetti drew a significant portrait ofElizabeth Siddal (figure 3), standing up in frontof an easel near the window of the studio atChatham Place. Undoubtedly there is a paintingon the easel, impossible to be seen by theviewer; Siddal's melancholical attitude invitesthe viewer to presume that its subject descends

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from a medieval chivalric story in which a ladyis involved. The peculiar gesture of balancingthe chair in front of the easel suggests the totaldetachment from reality inside or outside thestudio. Two iconographic motifs in the drawing- window and easel - problematize the twodistinct spaces: reality and art.

According to Elaine Shefer's study TheWoman at the Window8: the window is a mark ofseclusion, renunciation, and abandon. Theconfrontation between window and easel, theimpossible dialogue between the worlds theystand for is also depicted in Siddal's version TheLady of Shalott where the easel is replaced bythe loom (1853, pen and black and sepia ink andpencil on paper). The visual schemata combinesthe same symbolic objects in different formulas:Rossetti's drawing indicates the option for thefictional universe of art, the refuge inside theworld controlled by the demiurgic artist, a spacebeyond history in which the fragmentary imagesof history depend on the artist's will to bereflected. The closed window, the relaxedinformal position of the lady admiring thesupposed artefact on the easel, the silentconfrontation window vs. easel reflect theseductive pre-eminence of art over reality.

In Siddal's Lady of Shalott (figure 4) fourrectangular surfaces amplify the compositionalaxis: the first is the shadow of the loom onpremier plan; symmetrically placed is the

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window; in between the two, the loom itselffunctions as a filter that restrains the realityoutside the window to the reality enclosed in theframes of the window in order to limit it for thetapestry in fieri. The forth rectangle, a tapestry,refracts the image in the window horizontallythe same way the shadow of the loom refractsthe geometrical shape of the loom vertically.The tapestry on the wall is, in its turn, a mirrorof a world in the window that, time ago, frozethe irrepetably changing images characteristic toreality in the threads and knots of the tapestry.The intrusion of the outside world is imminentand the branch of the tree is its sign.

Siddals' drawing selects to illustrate thevery moment when the lady of Shalott lookedout of the window and thus accepted theinterference with reality (window) that annulledthe other three screens: the loom, the tapestry,the mirror. Since what is seen through thewindow represents a fragment of reality in fieri,inside the limited frame of the window thedrawing is a “representation ofrepresentations”9.

These four plane surfaces encapsulate atridimensional image: the Lady of Shalott aliasElizabeth Siddal accomplishes a series ofmirrorings of the mirror in an allegory of themost realistic transposition that contains theperfect simulacrum of the physical universe. The Lady of Shalott suddenly becomes aware of

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the infidelity of her mirror and, at the sametime, of her isolation. Abolishing mirroringsupremacy for a direct immediate perception ofreality, even if this decision is tragic, the ladyshould assume her inconvenient choice: realitymeans imminent death (the lady will die), unlikeart's eternal life; reality is unlimited andimpossible to be rendered in its endless forms,while art uses limited devices to comprise aninsignificant part of reality in the most mimeticwork (the mirror will break). Mimesis, the Greekterm for “imitation”, expresses the idea ofreducing reality to the scale of art through theprocess that minimises reality to the humandimensions. Sidall reflects (in Latin reflecteremeans “to send back”) the poem into apoliptical drawing, “a pictorial poem” ofmirroring the two options the artist can chooseprogrammatically.

Similarities between Rossetti's Portrait ofSiddal and Siddal's The Lady of Shalott plead fortheir permanent collaboration. Rossetti'sperspective on Siddal identifies her with aModern Lady of Shalott. In both drawings thelight comes through the window from behind thelady weaving a tapestry (the Lady of Shalott) orbehind the lady looking at/reading a picture(The Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal). Theprotagonist's position reading with the backturned to the source of light (looking at apicture and weaving the image of reality

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reflected in the mirror are equivalent to reading)belongs to an iconographical tradition thatstarted about the fifteenth century. Thisposition offers a double advantage, according toFritz Nies: from a pictorial point of view, thelight falling on the tapestry/picture/bookfacilitates the reading; from an iconologicalpoint of view, it grants the adequate reading ofthe text. In Imagerie de la lecture10 , he analysesthe position of a reader looking out of thewindow while reading and considers that thereader has the opportunity to censor or to rejectthe exterior reality. In Rossetti’s drawing ofSiddal the same pictorial circumstance made herapt to read/understand the picture on the easelas she masters l'éclairage de la lecture, in Nies’sterms.

In 1856, Christina Georgiana Rossettiwrote a sonnet apparently dedicated to Siddalthat focused on the importance of an obsessing/haunting face in her brother's pictorial works:

‘One face looks out from all hiscanvasses,

One selfsame figure sits or walksor leans:

We found her hidden just behindthose screens,

That mirror gave back all her loveliness.A queen in opal or in ruby dress,

A nameless girl in freshest

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summer-greens,

A saint, an angel; - every canvasmeans

The same one meaning, neither morenor less.

He feeds upon her face by day and night,And she with true kind eyes

looks back on himFair as the moon and joyful as the light:

Not wan with waiting, nor withsorrow dim;

Not as she is, but was when hope shonebright;

Not as she is, but as she fills hisdreams.’11

Taking into account GeorgianaChristina's sonnet, the viewer of The Portrait ofSiddal could presume that the picture Siddal islooking at is her own image, another portrait ofhers painted by Rossetti.

Siddal poses for Beatrice in the drawingGiotto Painting the Portrait of Dante (1852),which is the emblematic work elaborated on theartist-model theme in the picture in pictureformula: Dante poses for the portrait Giotto ismaking at Bargello - Florence, discovered in1840. The presence of Beatrice is confirmed bythe second text annexed to the drawing thatexplicits the pictorial intertext. Dante's sight is

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fixed on Beatrice, his donna angelicata,consequently Giotto should paint Dante's gaze,actually the spiritual love it reflects. Rossetti,assuming the role of the artist who is drawing anartist who, in his turn, is painting an artistillustrates the complex relationship artist-model-muse in the drawing and artist-model/muse outside the drawing.

He justifies in a letter the juxtapositionof the two literary fragments withoutconnection with the drawing:

“For the introduction of Beatrice... Iquote a passage from the Vita Nuova. I havethus all the influence of Dante's youth - art,friendship and love - with a real incidentembodying them. The combination is, I think,the best which has yet occurred to me inillustration of this period of the poet's life.”12

The first one denounces the masters in paintingand in poetry who influence him; the secondexposes his favourite theme: Dante's love forBeatrice:“Vede perfettamente ogni saluteChi la mia donna - tra le donne - vede.” (VitaNuova, XXVII, 10-11)D.G.Rossetti's translation: “For certain he hathseen all perfectness / Who among other ladieshath seen mine.”

Another image of Siddal is painted inDante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (1855,watercolour) where she models Rachel, the

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allegory of contemplative life. Purgatorio,XXVII, 100-108, is his poetic source:

”Sappia qualunque il mio nome dimandach'i' mi son Lia, e vo movendo intornole belle mani a farmi una ghirlanda.

Per piaceremi a lo specchio, quim'addorno;

ma mia suora Rachel mai non si smagadal suo miraglio, e siede tutto giorno.

Ell' è d'i suoi belli occhi vedervaga,

com'io de l'addornarmi con le mani;lei lo vedere, e me l'ovrare appaga”13

Rachel stares at her own image capturedby the water in the stone basin, a receptacle forthe natural divine beauty while Leah makes awreath. The contemplative and its counterpart,the active life, sit side by side in a perfectequilibrium. The chromatic harmony completesthe reading of this watercolour: the colours ofthe garments - purple and green - are combinedin Dante's garment; the hues of green in the veilof Rachel induce the idea that this figure isanother hypostasis of Beatrice (green is thesymbolic colour of Beatrice in Beatrice DenyingHer Salutation, The Meeting of Dante andBeatrice in Paradise). Rossetti's mystical artdisplaces fragments that are put together inanother context to create a new image of a

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famous character. His series of isotopies makespossible that Siddal poses for Beatrice andRachel at the same time; she is the one whocontemplates in order to be contemplated.

The triptych Paolo e Francesca daRimini (1855, watercolour) presents Siddal asFrancesca, story is concentrated in twomoments: the initial kiss that starts their loveaffair and the final punishment the adulterouswife of Malatesta. The Dantesque, the restlessvortex in Hell. Siddal's image changes: ecstasy isthe other element in her visual paradigmaticentity. Extatic experiences are renderedportraying Siddal in Dantis Amor, Beata Batrixand in the study for Delia.

Most of the works inspired by DanteAligheri or medieval cycles use the rudimentaryperspective as an anachronism that functions onthe temporal scale to mark the distance betweenthe time of events and the time of the story.

As regards the primitive perspective inD.G. Rossetti, it is the means by which hecorroborates the sacred and profane dimensions,history and fiction. Considering the etymologyof the term (Latin perspicere meant “to seethrough”), the illusion of tridimensionality inpainting records the way in which the divinegrace descends into the human material world.Adapting the to his model, specific for Dante,Beatrice, Rachel.

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Siddal as a Pre-Raphaelite artist

The Pre-Raphaelite technique ofpainting on the white ground that covered thelines of the design necessitated a rapid and suretouch of a small brush. Working on a driedcanvas allowed the painter to use transparentcolours and disperse the light all over thepicture. Besides, Pre-Raphaelites elaborated eachpart of a canvas as if it were the essential partof the composition, effacing their initialscheme.

Considering Siddal's entire work,mention should be made that the most numerousartefacts are drawings and watercolours and theless numerous are oil paintings. This globalinventory of her pictorial attempts orexperienced species proves her interest in theprocess of creation (drawing/painting) ratherthan in polishing or finishing the object of art.The lines of her drawings (1853 - 1854): TheLady of Shalott, Pippa passes, Sister Helen,Lovers Listening to Music seem to express thespeaker's utterance.

The analytical instruments to readSiddal’s drawings were offered by the chapterThe Gaze and the Glance of the Vision andPainting. The time of the utterance becomesthe time of the pictorial text that contains eachsign marked on the paper. Whatever the artist istrying to erase remains recorded on the paper

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and his/her final work is a complex summa thatkeeps visible all the stages of the artefact. Thus,Elizabeth Siddal's drawings could be view asdocuments of an artistic, elaborateprocessuality. Her pictorial enunciation re-actualises the literary enunciation of the literarytext she performs. For example, Sister Helen(first published in 1851), an illustration toRossetti's poem, plays with three portals: thefirst portal functions as an interior frame,stratagem that includes the viewer of thedrawing in the pictorial space. The viewer is awitness to the scene performed in front of him.Near the second arched portal Helen is knelt,staring at the cursed wax doll on the threshold.This architectonic element separates the outsideworld from the inside world. Helen’s brotherclimbing the stairs to see and hear themessengers sent by Keith of Ewern for his sisteroccupies the third portal on the left. Each ofthe three messengers' discourse: Keith ofEastholm, Keith of Westholm, Keith of Keithcould be resumed by her brother's mimicry inSiddal's illustration. The act of poetic utterance(consisting in the three almost identicalrepetitions of the brother's words) is enclosed ina unique pictorial image. What is successivelyregistered in the poetic sequences and graduallyprepares the climax of the text (Keith ofEwern's death) becomes simultaneously viewedin the drawing. The illusion of temporal

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transience/lapse of time is suggested by thefrequentative actions performed by the twocharacters: while supervising her magic, Helen istormenting herself (action in progress); whileclimbing the stairs (action in progress) her littlebrother is telling her the news messengerstransmit (action in progress).

The repetition of the utterances in thedialogical form of the poem is arrested in thedrawing by means of the insistent lines of thenib that one by one cover the white surface ofthe paper. The motion resided in the motionlesspen supports the interior struggle of thepersonages. The time of events overlaps thetime of the enounced (poem) and the time ofthe drawing (illustration).

This technique is characteristic forSiddal's drawings and watercolours, as well.Touches of the brush form stylisedcompositions of bright colours that remind theviewer of the illuminated medieval manuscripts.Expressive attitudes of protagonists in herwatercolour Lady Affixing a Pennant to aKnight's Spear (1856) display a transitorymoment of privacy before the knight's leaving.The Lady's silent hug is measured in the knight'srepetitive gesture of hammering;correspondingly, traces of the narrow brushmeasure their passion symbolised by the redpennant between the two. The conflictingspaces: interior vs. exterior are meant to

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polarise elements of the couple again. Theexterior is the male's unlimited world, which heis expected to come from, and which he will exiteventually, while the interior is the female'slimited world where she is imprisoned. Art is theonly solution for Siddal to escape from theVictorian ideology and each touch of brush freedher from social conventions. Her heroines carrythe burden of their incapacity of acting outsidetheir secure rooms, in the male's world (figure5). The Lady of Shalott and Helen are Siddal'sdiscrete dramatis personae.

Siddal on Siddal

Her Self-Portrait (1853, an oil paintingon canvas) differs substantially from Rossetti'sseries of portraits. Siddal's portraits signed byRossetti can be classified in two distinctcategories: the first contains those works inwhich she stands for “angelic beings” such as:Beatrice, St. Catherine, Rachel, due to herdeliberately dematerialised figures, thuscorrected by the artist in order to suit hisaesthetic idea of transcendental world,metaphysic reality; the second one includes alldrawings, sketches, that could be entitledPortraits of Siddal, in which her features aremore sensuous: carnal lips, dishevelled hair,langurous eyes, prominent nose, long neck. Infact, the works in the first category are either

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oil-paintings or watercolours, overelaboratedworks of art, while the drawings and sketches inthe second category are not intended to beconsidered finished works, as they are onlymoments of a historical existence fixed on asheet of paper that renders the lasciviousattitude, meditative pose, ecstatic figure,nonconformist actions for a Victorian woman.The only finished work in this category is theoil painting on canvas Beata Beatrix (1863).

Siddal paints herself in semi-profile as ifshe were watching the void (figure 6). Theposition of her head anticipates the position inSt.Catherine of Rossetti (1857); her self-portrait was painted in 1853, four years beforeRossetti's St. Catherine . She assumed theseriousness expressed in Rossetti's first series ofpictures and the impersonal non-activehypostasis. Having preferred to paint herself inthe most traditional formula of the mimetic bustportrait, she recommended herself as a domesticwife. The white collar of her dress reminds theviewer Millais's drawings on the married lifetheme, or of the decent photographs ofChristina Georgiana and Mrs. Gabriele Rossetti.Only one significant detail pleads for hercorporality: the dimple in her chin, an elementof physiognomy almost always effaced inRossetti's versions. In St. Caterine he stressesthe angularity of the saintly features, on the onehand, and in Elizabeth Siddal, pencil on paper,

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1860, this characteristic seems to be a shadowon a relaxed dreamy face that functions as anindividualising detail that completes the otherprovocative features.

In spite of Rossetti's manipulative worksand drawings, Siddal tried to reflect ElizabethSiddall's real appearance.14 Comparing this self-portrait with the self-portrait in the drawingpresenting her painting her self-portrait in thedrawing of Dante Gabriel Rossetti entitled AParable of Love (Love's Mirror), a pen and blackink with ink wash drawing, dated 1849-1850,the viewer perceives the differences between thetwo artefacts (figure 7). Although the image onthe easel is an image in fieri, it differs both inthe way of looking at the real world where thevirtual viewer should have been as a supposedparticipant and in the head dress; the hair isundone but carefully combed to fall on the backand on the shoulders of the woman, who lookstense as if she were afraid to move it while shewere posing for someone else.

Apparently, Siddall's eyes in the self-portrait are staring at the exterior world, whenactually the sight is inwardly oriented; her hair iscombed the same way it is in Beata Beatrix, infact, this head dress is the sign for Beatrice. Aninnocent viewer is impossible to find, sinceRossetti's works mainly perverted the receptorthrough their cultural instruments. He is misledby aesthetic devices and literary subjects

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whenever trying to make Siddal’s or Siddall’sauthentic portrait. As regards her own creativepersonality, Siddal or Siddall herself supporteda process of mystification: Rossetti's impact onher was extremely powerful and inducedmodification of her own image both for theothers and for herself.

Conclusion should be met: Siddal orSiddal is a Pre-Raphaelite artistic construct.

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N o t e s

1 Rossetti, William Michael, The P.R.B. Journal,

Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975, p. 67.2 Hunt, William Holman, Pre-Raphaelitism and The

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, vol.1, London, 1905 –1906, p. 198, apud. Faxon, Alicia Craig, DanteGabriel Rossetti, Abbeville Press Publishers, NewYork London Paris, 1994, p. 74.3 Apud. Pollock, Griselda, Vision and difference:Feminity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art,Routledge, London, 1991, p. 101 –102.4 Lee, Elizabeth, in WebMagick’s Pre-RaphaeliteCollection: Elizabeth Siddal.5 Surtees, Virginia, Rossetti’s Portraits of E. Siddal,Scholar Press, Oxford, 1991.6 Doughty, Oswald &Wahl, John Robert, Letters ofDante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. I, Clarendon Press,Oxfors, 1965, p. 238.7 apud. Faxon, Alicia Craig, Dante Gabriel Rossetti,Abbeville Press Publishers, New York London Paris,1994, p. 83.8 Shefer, Elaine, Birds, Cages and Women in Victorianand Pre-Raphaelite Art, Peter Land, New York, 1990,p. 127.9 Stoichita, Ieronim Victor, Efectul Don Quijote,Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1995.10 Imagerie de la lecture (Exploration d’un patrimoinemillénaire de l’Occident, PUF, Paris, 1995, p.111-112.)11 Rossetti, Georgiana Christina, Poems and Prose, ed.

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Jan Marsh, Rhe Everyman Library, London, 1994, p.127.12 Doughty, Oswald &Wahl, John Robert, Letters ofDante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. I, Clarendon Press,Oxfors, 1965, p. 123.13

Dante Tutte le opere, introduzione di Italo Borzi,commenti a cura di Giovanni Fallani, Nicola Maggi,Silvio Zennaro, Grandi Tascabili Economici Newton,Roma, 1993, p. 394.14

Siddall (with double ‘ll’) is her name in her papaers;Siddal is spel in the Pre-Raphaelite documents, a sortof the Pre-Raphaelite identity.

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C H A P T E R I V

B u r n e - J o n e s : R e - v i s i t a t i o n o f t h e R e n a s c e n t I t a l i a n P a t t e r n s

B o t t i c e l l i , L e o n a r d o , M i c h e l a n g e l o

During his last creative years Burne-Jones explored classical themes, and elegant,massive Italian forms in a pictorial universeembracing Ovidian myths: Cupid and Psyche,Pygmalion, Orpheus and Eurydice, Circe. Theworks of this period prove his interest in thepatterns specific of Botticelli and Michelangelo,and in the scenery inspired by Leonardo’s.

Although Ruskin attacks in a conferenceheld in1871 at Oxford, the devotedness forpanneggio and “the black flesh” which herecognizes in Michelangelo’s works, Burne-Jones continues to paint according to thisformula. Ruskin, in his turn, reconsiders hisstatements at the opening of Grovenor Galleryin 1877 where Burne-Jones exhibits his pictures;finally, the aesthetician will appreciate Burne-Jones as a “modern painter of mythology”.

Both Swinburne and Bune-Jones discoverBotticelli’s most significant works at the sametime – Primavera and Nascita di Venere – thatsubstantially influence Burne-Jones’s paintingsof the 1860s and 1870s.

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The group of the three enigmatic figuresin The Mill (1870) reminds us of the threeGraces in Botticelli’s Primavera. Unlike theimage that renders their ballet (Castitas steppingwith the left foot and the right one suspended;Voluptas drawing the others towards herself as ifthey had been performing a ritualistic dionysiacdance expressing erotism; Pulchritudocelebrating the physical beauty of the body),Burne-Jones’ group is just standing. Thecharacter in the right corner, who has justfinished playing a Renascent lute, a rhythmicalapollinical song, could be Apollo. He paints aversion of the Greek mythologic Harite: Aglaie– The Splendour, Euphrosine – The Merriment,Thalia – The Happiness, allegories of beauty,grace and charm. They are Apollo’scompanions and the water behind them,interpreted as an allusion to their divinegenealogy (they are descendent of Zeus andEurynome – the oceanide), reflects the image ofthe figures in the background. The Graces formthe procession of Aphrodite Urania.Accompanied by Flora who bears PallasAthena’s icons in Pallade ed il Centauro andAphrodite Pandemia’s icons in Nascita diVenere, they reveal the concept of essence oremanation of ideas which manifests itself intoan allegorical representation. According to theFicinian point of view, allegorical key leads tothe sanctification of the mythological world.

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This process becomes a figurative mannerism inBurne-Jones’s entire work, also is announced bythis painting. The motionless figures seem toemanate from the archetypes carved in marble,reflected in the water that functions as a mirrorof ideal beauty. In fact, the painting (figure 8)contains few narrative elements later developedin other pictorial versions of the same themethat proceed from the mythological materialreconsidered in the Renaissance.

Two of the thirty-eight tondi in TheFlower Book: Rose of Heaven and Marvel of theWorld show the same influence; the formalmodel of Botticelli and the theoretical supportof the neoplatonic philosophy. Burne-Jonespretends to return to the initial harmony ofthings and language by means of the classicalthemes and neoplatonic perspective, followingthe same patterns of the Renaissance. Hehimself admits that he paints The Flower Bookin order to illustrate suggestive names offlowers:“I want the name and the picture to be one soultogether, and indissoluble, as if they could notexist apart.”1

Both Rose of Heaven and Marvel of the World(figure 9) concentrate the characteristic aspectsfor Aphrodite in the two Botticelli’s picturesmentioned above: Zephyr is blowing thegoddess’ hair, Aphrodite’s position, the seascapewhere the waves are painted as pigeons in

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conformity with the medieval scheme ofillustrating the myth. On the one hand, Rose ofHeaven sub-entitled Venus and her dovesamongst the stars also refers to the miniatureVenus and her doves in Roman de la Rose,while Marvel of the World or Birth of Venusassimilates other elements of Botticelli’s pictureinto the scenery: Zephyr is metonymicallyreplaced by its effect – the storm -; Flora who isto veil Aphrodite would have been a redundantpresence since Venus is veiled in Burne-Jones’swatercolour; the Mediterranean scenerysubstituted by a northern one is suggested by theroses on the shore. The narrative dimension ofthe painted image enriches through thecommentary:“this suggestion of a storm that has just passedaway may be a hidden reference to the fact thatthe birth of Venus followed a violent battlebetween the Titans.”2

The emblematic cipher – mirror – is artisticallydecoded in Rose of Heaven, Venus’s LookingGlass in The Flower Book, and in the pictureThe Mirror of Venus (1898). They representthree different functions of the mirror whichcould derive from Corpus Hermeticum,translated for the first time by Marcilio Ficino.In the first case, the mirror stands for theessential attribute of the goddess whose perfectbeauty floods the dantesque universe. The objectof mirroring and contemplation is the full moon

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in the second watercolour where the moment ofa double perception becomes the subject of thepicture: Venus admires herself and makes thecelestial body her own mirror and this specularprocess is perceived by the viewer through acomplete communication between microcosmand macrocosm.

The narcissistic temptation of mirroringis more evident in The Mirror of Venus (figure10) where the act of reflection turns into amystic contemplation which Hermes controls.Water becomes the surface of the narcissisticmirroring, the symbol of illusion: it makesvisible what does not really exist but as areflection, as a shadow of an image. The water-mirror means the receptacle of Venus’s world asAphrodite Urania who presides over the Muses’suite and artistic knowledge. The reflected imagemirrors only the figures who recreate the groupof Graces and a fourth apart from them. TheMirror of Venus does not reflect the goddess’simage but the image of her beauty, pictoriallytransfigured into the discourse inspired by theMuses.

Three Renascent formulas combine inthe same work support this interpretation: thesource of the background is Leonardo’s SantaAnna, la Vergine e Gesù bambino, LaGioconda, La Vergine e il bambino. Panneggioand colouring proceed from Michelangelo, andpositions and attitudes from Botticelli. The

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landscape creates the relief effect, focusing onthe sinuous line of the shapes that enclose theworld of ideas and essences, the sensitive worldand the world of the artistic beautiful shapes inthe frame of the picture. Following Botticelli’spattern, which starts from the abstract notionor image of things and refines, spiritualizes,sublimates it until things are annihilated andbecome idea, Burne-Jones also focuses on thevery figure representing the idea of artisticbeauty. He builds a composition combiningBotticelli’s conception with Leonardo’sperspective which rejects the abstract notion butaccepts “the pure phenomenon which can beseen before realizing that there are trees, rivers,or rocks, transcending natura naturata in orderto render natura naturans.”3

Like Michelangelo, Burne-Jonestransfers the matter of the picture into colour:in Michelangelo’s paintings the colour works asa sublime matter able to become space and lightwithout disappearing behind forms. Each colouris pure, “archetypal”: yellow, red, blue; coloursdo not mix each other. At the figurative level,where volumes are suspended in an empty spacetowards which things turn in a unique andpermanent rhythm, the figures sunk into self-contemplation form a vortex. Appropriatingthe conception of Botticelli, considered to be “amystic of the ideal beauty, an aesthete”4, Burne-Jones tries to impose his pictorial programme:

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“I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dreamof something that never was, never will be – in alight better that any light that ever shone – in aland no one can define or remember, onlydesire…”5

The defining aspects of Quattrocento are spreadin a new pictorial puzzle that claims a doublereading: on the one hand, an analytical readingof each element excerpted from its originalcontext, on the other hand, a synthetic readingof the whole work in which these fragmentsnarrate their own cultural story in a modernperspective.

The canvas The Golden Stairs (1880)programmatically expresses the hermetism ofthe Florentine Academy (AccademiaFiorentina) through the agency of Botticelli;Leonardo’s typical intrusions lack in thispicture. Burne-Jones expands Botticelli’smannerism who rejects the concrete thing, thetangible sensation to enclose the statuaryformalism of panneggio, characteristic ofMichelangelo, but arresting the cult of motion“of studied eurhythmics, filled with the musicalgrace of the spirit haunted by supremeharmony.”6

The eurhythmics of Botticelli’s work seems tobe the subject of Burne-Jones’s painting. TheGolden Stairs (figure 10) renders theneoplatonic idea in a pictorial allegory. TheFicinian idea is not the platonic archetype but a

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vague entity to be beyond nature (the physicalspace), beyond history (time). Even beautyidentified with the idea is an aliquidincorporeum and distrusts the sensitive world.The themes of antiquity propose a certain kindof nature: the appearance of things is simpleallegory.

Burne-Jones paints the allegory ofartistic beauty: the suite of the eighteen figuresdescending eighteen steps is divided into twogroups. The nine maidens upstairs remind theviewer of Flora’s position in Primavera (the leftfoot one step ahead, the right, one behind),while the other nine downstairs have alreadychanged the step. The space between the girlplaying tambourine and the girl playing violad’amore separates the two groups of nineMuses. The symbol of stairs supports thisargument:

“Stairs represent the axis of the world,vertically and volute. When the stairs arevolute, send to the origin of an axialdevelopment which could be God, principle,love, art, conscience or the I of a being inprogress, entirely based on the same origin thevolutes are built on.”7

Taking into account the descensus sense ant theplatonic conception about the soul crossing thesensitive world to reach the intelligible world,one may state that Burne-Jones pleads for art asan ideal image of reality. Three of the figures

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downstairs are crowned with laurels, the sign ofthe poetic triumph (crown of laurels) and theothers form a semicircle around the laurels underthe stairs. The group upstairs seems to havealready lost the artistic capacity since none ofthem bears the emblem of the artistic glory andtwo twigs of laurels are abandoned on the steps.This picture may be interpreted as a Pre-Raphaelite ars-poetica: the urge “go to [divine]nature” corresponding to the medieval stage, isreplaced by the urge “go to [real] nature” thatpoints out the option for the Renascent sourceof inspiration: the Renascent Pre-Raphaelitestage in which divinity is epiphanicallyrepresented in the natural forms of being.

The picture contains a summa of arts:poetry suggested by laurels proceeding fromPetrarchan tradition, music vibrating in themusical instruments excerpted fromArcheologia musicale, in perfect harmony withthe decorum, the circumstance all’antica andthe classical laws of the descriptive geometry.

Michelangelo’s influence starts with thePygmalion Cycle (1868 - 1870), of which mostfamous are Pygmalion and the Image and TheGodhead Fires (figure 11). The Godhead Firesmarks a stylistic change: Burne-Jones decides touse Michelangelo’s pattern instead ofBotticelli’s as regards the structure of the work.The story of the artist in love with his ownwork of art proceeds from Ovid’s

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Metamorphosis, which is given a more complexmeaning in Roman de la Rose. At the end ofthe poem, the protagonist, member of Amor’sprocession, tries in vain to enter the castle ofLove. He asks for Venus’s help. The image ofthe goddess with the bow prepared to fire theLove Castle interrupts the narrative discourse tointroduce a digression about Pygmalion, that isnot a simple rhetoric artifice, but a pretext toexpound the theory of fol amour characteristicof the courtly poetry. The miserable sculptorlaments about his love for “une ymage sourde etmue/ qui ne se crole ne se mue”. His passionmixing hope and despair manifests a morbidperverse desire for "image". In his monologue,Pygmalion compares himself with Narcissus, inlove with his own person / image; he, in his turn,falls in love with his own work. Nowadays, onemay say that he is in love with a fetish. Themyth of Narcissus represents another recurrenttheme in medieval poetry: a man admires hisimage reflected in a mirror identified with TheFountain if Love. In the Middle Ages this mythassociates the narcissistic love with the love forimage. Miniatures and illustrations reveal theperverted aspect of his love; Pygmalion ispresented either as an affectionate lover that isstroking the naked “image” lasciviously or as adevout admirer knelt in front of his artefact andabsorbed in an extatic adoration. Jean de Meungreturns to the moment when Venus had

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stretched the bow shooting at a window betweenthe two pillars that support the statue of awoman. The fired arrow gets in the castlethrough the window. This statue - a woman’sbust, two columns as legs and the window inbetween – seems to be both the object of theknight’s love and the object of Pygmalion’slove.

Unlike the narrative line in Roman dela Rose, Burne-Jones’s painted figures arerepressed. In The Godhead Fires the suggestivedetails such as: roses, sculptor’s tools, the towerin the background, pigeons, the column on theleft, implicitly refer to the medieval source ofthe cult for image Roman de la Rose is. TheEnglish artist confronts the two evidentpatterns in an elaborate composition: thesublimated image of the goddess, born spirituallyin the waters of the sea (Venus has no mother,so she has no direct connection with matter),sends to Botticelli’s work Nascita di Venere,while the image of the massive muscular statuethat draws attention to the physical weight andcorporality of the matter, is reminiscent ofMichelangelo’s pictorial formula. This statuaryvolume transmits an impulse that destroys theinertia of the matter. This position means anirresistible attraction to Venus, who gives life tothe statue from a neoplatonic perspective. Infact, the plastic relief in-forms the statue.According to Michelangelo, the image is

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virtually kept in the marble block and the artistshould carve it removing what he considers to beuseless for the artistic formal aspect. Burne-Jones’s picture hints at Michelangelo’sstatement: he paints the moment of releasingthe shape from the statuary into pictorialtechnique that uses volumes as expressiveelements of drawing: composition and line.

The most relevant painting inspired byMichelangelo’s sculptural patterns, subjects andidealism is The Wheel of Fortune (1883). Thesuspended figures, as the ones in the SistineChapel, seem to move and arrest, due to aspiritual principle, Apollo’s divine power. Thepainter focuses on the process of carving, whichis the noblest artistic manifestation forMichelangelo (Schiavo che si ridesta, anunfinished version of Giulio the Second’s tomb –1530 -34), since it annuls the matter to allowthe concept – disegno – to materializeaesthetically. Thus, Burne-Jones declines thenaturalistic manner that dominates the paintingof the nineteenth century and chooses thesculptural expressive modality transferred intopainting. The structure of his pictorialcomposition is based on a formal mass, whichrevolves around Moira (the Greek term forfortune’). He does not imitate the antico; hesynthesizes the ancient, classical spirituality andthe modern one in a more complex anddramatic way.

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The sexual ambiguity of the faces,characteristic of his works, descends from theneoplatonic tradition, as well. The androgynousmotif has been considered the most suitable oneto embody the angelic pure “substance” inpainting. This motif, essential in the works ofVerrochio, Botticelli, Gozzoli, Filoppo Lippi,Leonardo, and Michelangelo, expresses theconfusion between sexes that is solved throughcelestial love. In the Greek mythology, Zeuscorrects this double being and offers it thepossibility of sharing love. Burne-Jones’s facessuggest the renaissance of the initial harmonyby means of the self-sufficient perfect being,uninvolved in search for the other.

Starting from the artistic conventions ofthe Italian Renaissance, Burne-Jones creates anoriginal pictorial universe and a model for theEuropean art at the end of the nineteenthcentury.

Although the Pre-Raphaelites togetherwith Ruskin resent artificiality and technicalprocedures, classical rules and renascentconventions, they follow the renascentorientation. Moreover, trying to legitimate afamous genealogy, the Pre-Raphaelites alwaysseek to demonstrate their connection with agreat cultural tradition, either medieval orrenascent, that leads their artistic mannerism toa formal composite exploration, which plays aparadigmatic role in Modernism.

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N o t e s

1 Apud. The Flower Book, Taschen, Düsseldorf, 1991,

p. 10.2 Ibid., p. 68.

3 Argan, G.C., Storia dell’Arte Italiana, Sansoni,

Firenze, 1989, vol. 2, p. 234.4 Argan, G.C., Storia dell’Arte Italiana, Sansoni,

Firenze, 1989, vol. 2, chapter about Botticelli.5 Spalding, F., Mahnificent Dreams: Burne-Jones and

the Late Victorians, Phaidon, Oxford, 1978, p. 42.6 Baconsky, A.E., Botticelli, Meridiane, Bucuresti,

1975.7 Chevalier, Jean and Gheerbrant, Alain , Dictionnaire

des symboles. Mythes, rêves, coutumes, gestes, formes,couleurs, nombres, (our translation), Robert Laffont,Paris, 1969.

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C H A P T E R V

T h e P o e t i c s o f D e t a i l in t h e A m e r i c a n P r e - R a p h a e l i t e P a i n t i n g

The reception of Pre-Raphaelites’pictorial art and aesthetic ideas in the Americancultural space coincides with the publication of thefirst editions of Walt Whitman’s poems: Leaves ofGrass, no mention of the author’s name, NewYork, Brooklyn, 1855; Walt Whitman, Leaves ofGrass 1856, with an excerpt from Ralph WaldoEmerson’s letter to Whitman on the back cover (“Igreet you at the beginning of a great career”) andthe whole letter inside as appendix; WaltWhitman, Leaves of Grass 1860 that contains 154poems among which “A Word Out of the Sea”(later renamed “Out of the Cradle EndlesslyRocking”) and “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean ofLife” are the most famous of the added texts.Thayer and Eldridge in Boston published this thirdedition.

Mention should be made that a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition took place in 1857 in theUnited States. Taking into account that in July1857 Brown organized a Pre-Raphaelite exhibitionin 4 Russell Place – London, it is possible thatmany paintings and watercolours displayed therewere selected to represent a trend of the English

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painting when the American Exhibition of BritishArt was sent to New York. In 1857-58 anexhibition of British art containing Pre-Raphaelites’ works was in Philadelphia. By thattime the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William HolmanHunt, John Everett Millais, Frederick GeorgeStephens, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner,William Michel Rossetti, had been officiallydispersed for four years. Their idea of a circlewhose members shared the same aestheticconception, scale of value, pictorial and literarymodels was inseminated in America and, in 1863,the Association for the Advancement of Truth inArt was founded. Its members and adherents:Charles Moore, Thomas C. Farrer, ClarenceCook, William Stillman, John W. Hill, John HenryHill, William Trost Richards reconsidered theleading principles of the British brotherhood:although the medieval

structure of a guild was maintained, the medievalnarrative cycles, chivalric characters, escapistatmosphere, primitive perspective, angular shapes,specific of the stage of medieval inspiration, wereabandoned. The American Pre-Raphaelites wereobviously interested in nature as soon as itexpressed the divine glory of God. More than theirBritish fellows, the American artists preferred toexpress their theories mainly by writing articles,studies, critical responses, editorial replies in theirmagazine - New Path - rather than paintingoriginal works of art. The British artisticprogramme exposed in the first two issues of the

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Pre-Raphaelite magazine, The Germ – Thoughtstowards Nature in Poetry, Literature, and Art andthe last issue entitled Art and Poetry – BeingThoughts towards Nature had pleaded for “anentire adherence to the simplicity of nature” in1849 –501. A similar urge appeared in the NewPath where it also reflected a strong religiosity:

“seeing God and hearing His voice inevery golden-hearted star that bends before thewind, in every blade of grass, in every rosy cloverhead, and every golden dandelion, think you wewould dare to draw or paint any of these things,bent into grace and loveliness by God’s finger,carelessly or coarsely, and give a […] daub ofpaint […] as the truth of mullen, thistle, or dockleaf?”2

The doctrinal similarities between theBritish Pre-Raphaelitism and its American versioncould be explained by the articles signed by F.G.Stephens and William Michael Rossetti in theAmerican magazines which promoted Pre-Raphaelite art, on the one hand, and John Ruskin’sworks, on the other. Clarence Cook wrote in theNew York Daily Tribune about the great influenceRuskin had on the American artists (1863);Charles Moore presented him as an apostle of thetruth (1864); Thomas C. Farrer called him“glorious consciousness”; all of them read ModernPainters3 and painted accordingly.

Their constant interest in landscapes,seascapes, rocks, streams, lakes descends bothfrom the Pre-Raphaelite artistic programme and

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Ruskinian thought. Considering that the high artshould address the human intellect through themost elevating ideas, Ruskin rejects the mimeticwork of art as long as its aim is mere hedonism.Art based on imitation eludes invention while itspleasure annihilates the didactic mission. In thefirst volume of Modern Painters (1843), heaffirms the superiority of imaginative truth thatresults from a complete comprehension of theobjective reality. Consequently, the artist shouldbe faithful to his own visions that determineaesthesis to become theoria. According to Ruskintheoria is an exalted perception and the uniquepossibility of expressing the illimited, theincomprehensible, the ineffable.

“[Artists] should go to Nature in all singleness ofheart […] rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, andscorning nothing; believing all things to be rightand good, and rejoicing always in the truth. Then,when their memories are stored, and theirimaginations fed, and their hands firm, let themtake up the scarlet and the gold, give the reins totheir fancy, and show us what their heads aremade of.”4

Since Ruskin subordinates expression toidea, sense to intellect, art is valued axiologicallyfrom a teleological point of view. He meets theconclusion that the term aesthesis should bereplaced by theoria in the discourse on art andBeauty. Even if Beauty seems to lack its sensitiveaspect, it reaches a moral and spiritual finality. Heasserts that Beauty should be contemplated andunderstood as a divine gift only by means of the

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theoretical faculty in order to elevate humanexistence. The sensible element is accepted if andonly if it leads to the revelation of Divinity.Generating an aesthetic joy, sensitive Beautybecomes a theoretical faculty. The receptor’saesthetic emotion emerges from his moral nature,ignoring both sense and intellectual perception. Inthe third volume, Ruskin defines “the real natureof greatness of style” resuming his own argumentsin Volume I: a painter should “accept nature asshe is”; reveal the beauty of all things and forms;render “the largest possible quantity of Truth”.5 In1856 when the fourth volume was published,Ruskin devoted important passages to the Alpineaustere landscape.

The Pre-Raphaelites and their disciplestransfer these theoretical principles into a pictorialpoetics: to be true to nature means to paint eachdetail, each element, no matter how minor it is inthe whole composition, no matter where it isplaced in the picture. Center or margin, in the lightor in the shadow, protagonist or episodiccharacter, fictional or real image is the same.Everything seems emblematic for anothertranscendental reality, visualized through thesematerial forms. Paradoxically, minutely painteddetails suppose a superior spiritual level towardswhich the viewer is transgressed by itsvisual/objective correlatives.

Nature had represented the mainAmerican theme before, precisely in the first halfof the nineteentyh century: Thomas Cole, theleader of the Hudson school, Asher Brown

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Durand, Thomas Doughty, John F. Kensettpainted natural sceneries with a great interesteither in the overwhelming majesty and idyllicprimitivity or in the “topographic description”6.

American Pre-Raphaelite paintingsindicate the preference for nature, realisticallyperceived, nature which is the perfect setting ofdirect communication with divinity. This is thestarting point of a comparative approach betweenWalt Whitman’s poetry and American Pre-Raphaelites’ works. They express sincereadmiration for the American vast surfaces that areviewed from a high perspective: from the distance,above the scenery that stretches before thepainter’s or the poet’s eyes.

The unique point of view from which thepanoramic sights are seen and painted alwayssuggests a privileged position of the artist. Abinary visual schemata evidences spatiality: abovevs. below, near vs. in the distance. It is on theopposite peak, on the top of a mountain, on theother bank of the river, on the shore of the oceanthe position where the painter places his easel(figure 12). This apparent opposition between theplace of the viewer and the viewed scene proves tobe an all-inclusive expanded space that issupposed beyond the limits of the vision field andthe picture sides.

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T h e p i c t u r e / t h e p o e m

T h e p a i n t e r s / t h e p o e t ' s f i e l d o f v i s i o n

T h e e x t e r i o r w o r l d

Selecting the infinite exterior world asreferent, American painters assume a certainposition inside this world that permits them toarrest a large fragment of space. No motiondisturbs the calm of the atmosphere; the image isexclusively static. The viewing subjectcontemplates the fragment enclosed in his field ofvision and then recreates it as faithfully aspossible in order to fix a divine epiphany. Tosuggest the varied beauties of nature, the painterpays much attention to those elements that requirea specific technique of recording the minutedetails as if they were magnified by powerfullenses. Thus, foliage, branches, ferns, geologicalconfigurations, blades of grass make visible/putinto light each touch of the brush. Clarity – acharacteristic for all these paintings – objectifiesthe repeated strokes of the brush in large

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landscapes. The time of viewing is the time ofpainting since it is well known that these artistspainted in the open air. An eloquent example isJohn W. Hill who spent up to ten hours a day topaint his: Trap Rock (1863), View from High Tor,Haverstraw, New York (1866), Bird’s Nest andDogflowers (1867). Time becomes another aspectof spatiality. The painted surface imitates a certainnatural background at a certain moment thatbecomes an iconic attribute of a certain place, inits turn. These exhaustive depictions determine thereceptor to notice the successive juxtapositions,superpositions, and interference of theinsignificant elements to reveal gradually anenormous image. Leaves and branches of trees,foliage, seeds in William Trost Richards’sLandscape (1860) display the invasion of thevegetation in praesentia. Nature performs its ownshow (figure 13). This visual explosion seems tobe in progress at the very moment of reading thepicture.

The eternal present in Walt Whitman’spoetry functions similarly. The poetic subjectalways assumes the hypostasis of a perceiver ofthe American land:

“I hear America singing, the varied carolsI hear” 7 (I Hear America Singing)

“See, vast trackless spaces […]8

……………………………………

See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, thehunter’s hut, the

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flat-boat, the maize-leaf, theclaim, the rude fence, and

the backwoods village,

See, on the one side the Western Sea andon the other the

Eastern Sea, how they advanceand retreat upon my poems

as upon their own shores,

See, pastures and forests in my poems –see, […]”9 (Starting from Paumanok)

Statistically speaking, Simple Present Tensedominates the verbal forms in Whitman’s poems.The reader confronts with long series of variouscomponents that construct a progressive image ofthe American continent while reading. Althoughrather conventionalized as a poetical image, theAmerican decorum is identified by geographicalindications:

“Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land ofthe Delaware!

Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!

Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusettsland! Land of Vermont and Connecticut!

Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierrasand peaks!”10

Ocean, fields, large forests, huge mountains reflectthe earthly splendour and the divine grace from aquantitative perspective. This option for the huge

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natural dimensions expressed in long enumerativeinvocations is a characteristic feature of theWhitmanian denotative poetry. Endlessenumerations based on syntactical parallelismreflect the same temptation ofcomprising/covering vast areas. No figure ofspeech, trope or poetical epithet interrupts thesuccessive series of nouns and their geographicaldeterminants. Only few epithets define dimensionof the American space: vast, immense, andenormous. The reviews of that time pointed outhis severe style. In Brooklyn Daily Eagle of 15September 1855, the critic insisted on thedirectness and unelaborated language:

“[…] we have the free utterance of an untramelledspirit without the slightest regard to establishedmodels or fixed standard of taste. His scenerypresents no shaven lawns or neatly trimmedarbors; no hot house conservatory, where delicateexotics odorise the air and enchant the eye. If wefollow the poet we must scale unknown precipicesand climb untrodden mountains; or we boat onnameless lakes, […] or we wander among theprimeval forests, now pressing the yieldingsurface of velvet moss, and anon caught amongthickets and brambles. He believes in the ancientphilosophy that there is no more real beauty ormerit in one particle of matter than another; heappreciates all…”11

Another article in the New York Daily Tribunedrew attention to the new poetic formula of thefree verse that matched the natural ruggedness:

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“They [Leaves of Grass] are certainly original intheir external form, have been shaped on no pre-existent model out of the author’s own brain. […]They are full of bold, stirring thoughts – withoccasional passages of effective description,betraying a genuine intimacy with Nature and akeen appreciation of beauty – often presenting arare felicity of diction […].”12

Literariness, specific for the fragmentsthat refer to the American landscape correspondsto clarity, naturalistic detail, “sharply focusedstyle”13 in the American Pre-Raphaelites’paintings. In fact, both contemporary artisticmanifestations express the American divinebeauty by means of the most adequatepoetic/pictorial devices. The pictorial equivalentof this rythmicity of the free verse is the absenceof an arhitectonical structure: imitating Natureboth the poet and the painter mirror God’s perfectcreation. They refuse to intrude imperfect humanprecepts into the divine work: natural disposalprevails over any kind of hierarchies. WaltWhitman’s “Song of Myself” underlines theequality of the worldly elements:

“All truths wait in all things,

They neither hasten their own delivery norresist it,

……………………………………………

The insignificant is as big to me as any,

(What is less or more than a touch?)

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[…]

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than thejourney-work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and agrain of sand and the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre forthe highest,

And the running blackberry would adornthe parlors of heaven…”14 (Song of Myself)

The American Pre-Raphaelites raise the detail tothe level of completion: John W. Hill paints Bird’sNest and Dogflowers (1867), William TrostRichards Red Clover, Butter-and Eggs, andGround Ivy (1860), Aaron D. Shattuck Leaf Studywith Yellow Swallow Tail (1859). Theircompositional space breaks its unity: inWhitman’s poetry no stanzic unit, prosodicscheme, poetical form can be identified; AmericanPre-Raphaelites’ paintings and watercolour do notobey classical pictorial formulas. Their relevanttitles always send to a real place that becomes apictorial subject rejecting artistic laws, chromaticprinciples, balanced proportions, and axialconfigurations. Whitmanian poetry and AmericanPre-Raphalite art are organized syntagmatically, inJakobson’s term. Poems and paintings are anartistic metonimic proofs of the divineconsubstantial Beauty. Imitative pictorialoccurrences start a process of association thatsends back to the natural referent. Naturalcontiguity transformed into a compositional

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conduct serves as a substitute for the famousEuropean traditions:

“The artists are nearly all young men; they are nothampered by too many traditions, and they enjoyalmost inestimable advantage of having no past,no masters and no schools.”15

The British Pre-Raphaelites’ naturalisticexperiments were accepted as they met theAmericans’ expectations. Nevertheless the Britishartists used natural details to support their mainsubjects, to confer them an exquisite background.Their studies or pictorial essays devotedexclusively to naturalistic theme remain peripheralby comparison with the rest of their works. Unlikethem, the American Pre-Raphaelites challengedthemselves trying to arrest the marvelous image ofCreation into a detailed epiphanic picture and toset the process of viewing in a frame.

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N o t e s

1 The Germ. A Pre-Raphaelite Little Magazine,University of Miami Press, 1970.2 apud. Casteras, P. Susan, English Pre-Raphaelitismand Its Reception in America in the 19 th Century,Associated University Press, London & Toronto, 1990,p. 149.3 idem.4 Ruskin, John, Modern Painters, apud. Christian, John,“A Serious Talk”: Ruskin’s Place in Burne-Jones’sArtistic Development, in Pre-Raphaelite Papers, Paris,Leslie, ed., London, 1984, p. 185.5 apud. Christian, John, “A Serious Talk”: Ruskin’sPlace in Burne-Jones’s Artistic Development, in Pre-Raphaelite Papers, Paris, Leslie, ed., London, 1984, p.188-89.6 Grigorescu , Dan, Istoria artei americane, SaeculumI.O., Bucuresti, 1997, p. 146.7 Whitman, Walt, The Complete Poems, PenguinBooks, London, 1986, p. 47.8 ibid. p. 51.9 ibid. 62.10 ibid. 5911 Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass – an ExtraordinaryBook, in Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, 15 September 1855.12 New Publications: Leaves of Grass, in New YorkDaily Tribune, 23 July 1855.13 Treuherz, Julian, Victorian Painting, Hudson andLondon, London, 1997, p. 94.14 Walt Whitman, op.cit. p. 93.15 The New Path, the opening statement apud. Adam,Steven, The Arts and Crafts Movement, Grange Books,London, 1996, p. 36.

F i g u r e s

FIGURE 1Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith(1868), Delaware Art Museum,Wilmington

FIGURE 2Dante Gabriel Rossetti, SibyllaPalmifera (1866 - 70), Lady LeverArt Gallery, Port Sunlight

FIGURE 3Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Drawing of Siddal atChatham Place (1854)

FIGURE 4Elizabeth Siddal, The Lady of Shalott (1853),Jeremy Maas

FIGURE 5Elizabeth Siddal, Lady Affixing a Pennant to aKnight’s Spear (1856), Tate Gallery, London

FIGURE 6Elizabeth Siddal, Self-Portrait (1834 - 62),Private Collection

FIGURE 7Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A Parable of Love(Love’s Mirror) (1849 - 50)

FIGURE 8Edward Burne-Jones, The Mill (1872 - 80),Victoria & Albert Museum, London

FIGURE 9Edward Burne-Jones, Rose of Heaven, in TheFlower Book

FIGURE 10Edward Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs(1872 - 80), Tate Gallery, London

FIGURE 11Edward Burne – Jones, Pygmalion and theImage – The Godhead Fires (1868 - 78),Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

FIGURE 12Thomas C. Farrer, Mount Tom (1865)

FIGURE 13William Trost Richards, Landscape (1860)

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