Exhibit:

Feminine Archetype: Lover

Preview of images

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel (1877)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (1858)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, St. Cecilia (1856-1857)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Head of Elizabeth Siddal (1855)

Rossetti, Blessed DamozelThe following exhibit includes reformatted content from The Rossetti Archive, now made available for reassembly through the the COVE database. The content is open access but you need to subscribe to reassemble material into new collections at COVE. We have created exhibits based on thematic elements to illustrate how Rossetti Archive content can be reassembled in interesting ways.  This particular exhibit, one of several on Femine Archetypes, concentrates on The Lover. 

Images in this Exhibit

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel (1877)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel (1877)

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive. 

Emparadised Damozel gazing downward. “Behind the Damozel, beneath spreading branches, groups of lovers embrace against a pink sky; below her a pink flame outlines three angel heads. In the predella the earthly lover rests beside a river in a wooded landscape” (Surtees, Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 142). Stephens' description is more elaborate: “Beata Beatrix,” 86-88.

Scholarly...
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (1858)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (1858)

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary                                  

Introduction

This famous drawing gives an important statement of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's thoughts about the relation of pictorial forms of representation to the expression of ideas. Indeed, the picture amounts to a formal embodiment of its own thinking. Like...
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, St. Cecilia (1856-1857)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, St. Cecilia (1856-1857)

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

This drawing is perhaps the most celebrated in the series of drawings Dante Gabriel Rossetti made to illustrate texts from Lord Alfred Tennyson's poetry. The target in this case is "The Palace of Art” (lines 97-100). The difficulty arises because of the erotic intensity of the picture, which (given the source text) appears to represent a (male) angel embracing the...
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Head of Elizabeth Siddal (1855)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Head of Elizabeth Siddal (1855)

 

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive. 

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

This image of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829-1862) is perhaps the most dominant figura of the first phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Until her tragic death of an overdose of laudanum, she was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's principal model. She inspired him to create an extraordinary series of portrait drawings, and he used her image as the focus for...