Ut Pictura Poesis an Analysis of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’S Double Works

UT PICTURA POESIS AN ANALYSIS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI’S DOUBLE WORKS

Petra Meyns Studentennummer: 00714117

Promotor: Prof. dr. Marysa Demoor

Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de Taal- en letterkunde: Engels

Academiejaar: 2018 – 2019

UT PICTURA POESIS AN ANALYSIS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI’S DOUBLE WORKS

Petra Meyns Studentennummer: 00714117

Promotor: Prof. dr. Marysa Demoor

Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de Taal- en letterkunde: Engels

Academiejaar: 2018 – 2019

My own belief is that I am a poet ... primarily and that it is my poetic tendencies that chiefly give value to my pictures: only painting being - what poetry is not - a livelihood - I have put my poetry chiefly in that form. On the other hand, the bread -and -cheese question has led to a good deal of my painting being pot-boiling and no more - whereas my verse, being unprofitable, has remained ... unprostituted. D.G. Rossetti, letter to Dr. Hake, 21 April 1870 (qtd. in Lewis 199)

Acknowledgements

During my research, I have often read acknowledgements not fully grasping to what extent these meant something to the author expressing the acknowledgements. Now that I have completed this dissertation, I realise that, throughout the past few months and years, I have been surrounded too by people without whose support and help this dissertation would not have been what it is today. I would like to thank, in particular, those who remained close and supported me for they knew how bumpy the road towards this dissertation would be for me for reasons and causes beyond my power.

Firstly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor Prof. Dr. Demoor for her continuous support and encouragement, her kindness, and her insightful help and useful suggestions. Secondly, I would like to thank my family and friends for their support throughout this entire process. And last but not least, I would like to thank my partner, Laurent, for his patience and perpetual belief in me during this time for this dissertation to come into being.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: General Introduction ...... 8 Chapter 2: Objectives and Method ...... 9 2.1. Objectives ...... 9 2.2. Method...... 9 Chapter 3: Context ...... 11 3.1. Ekphrasis and the Double Works of Art ...... 11 3.2. The Petrarchan Sonnet ...... 15 3.3. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Pre-Raphaelitism in the Work of DGR ...... 17 Origin of the PRB...... 17 The Use of Ekphrasis in the PRB ...... 20 3.4. The Main Characteristics of DGR’s Double Works ...... 20 Realism ...... 20 Symbolism ...... 21 Detail ...... 22 3.5. The Influences in DGR’s Double Works ...... 23 Dante Alighieri ...... 23 William Blake ...... 23 Mythology ...... 24 3.6. The Themes in DGR’s Double Works ...... 24 Religion ...... 24 Femininity and Beauty ...... 25 Medievalism ...... 26 Chapter 4: A Close Reading of DGR’s Double Works ...... 27 4.1. Phase One (1848-1853) ...... 27 The Girlhood of Mary Virgin ...... 28 Ecce Ancilla Domini! ...... 33 The Blessed Damozel ...... 36 Conclusion ...... 41 4.2. Phase Two (1854-1862) ...... 42 Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee ...... 43 The Passover in the Holy Family ...... 46 Bocca Baciata ...... 49

4.3. Phase Three (1863-1882) ...... 53 Venus Verticordia ...... 55 Pandora ...... 58 Astarte Syriaca ...... 61 Proserpine ...... 64 Chapter 5: Conclusion ...... 68 Works Cited ...... 69 Appendix 1 - List of Poems ...... 74 Mary’s Girlhood (For a Picture) ...... 74 The Blessed Damozel ...... 75 Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (For a Drawing) ...... 79 The Passover in the Holy Family (For a Drawing) ...... 80 The Song of the Bower ...... 81 Venus Verticordia (For a Picture) ...... 82 Pandora (For a Picture) ...... 83 Astarte Syriaca (For a Picture) ...... 84 Proserpina (For a Picture) ...... 85 Appendix 2 - List of Figures ...... 86 Figure 1 - The Girlhood of Mary Virgin ...... 86 Figure 2 - Ecce Ancilla Domini! ...... 87 Figure 3 - The Blessed Damozel ...... 88 Figure 4 - Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee ...... 89 Figure 5 - The Passover in the Holy Family ...... 90 Figure 6 - Bocca Baciata ...... 91 Figure 7 - Venus Verticordia ...... 92 Figure 8 - Pandora ...... 93 Figure 9 - Astarte Syriaca ...... 94 Figure 10 - Proserpina ...... 95

Aantal woorden: 26211

Abbreviations

In this dissertation I used the following abbreviations: DGR Dante Gabriel Rossetti PRB Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Chapter 1: General Introduction

Out of a passion for visual art and literature, I have chosen to dedicate my dissertation to the Pre- Raphaelite movement that combined these sister arts and, in particular, to one of its most known practitioners and inspirational painter-poets, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The cultural setting and historical background for this dissertation is the Pre-Raphaelite movement within the Victorian era which always fascinated me because of its artistic development and combination of tradition and progress. It was the beginning of industrialism and the growth of the empire of Great Britain which would leave its mark on the world for decades to come. This era also brought about many artists and poets who became part of a literary canon. One of them is DGR.

The artist is intriguing because of the many questions his oeuvre raises. The most common questions are: What was his inspiration to compose a painting or a poem? Was DGR rather a painter or a poet? With respect to his double works (discussed in further details in this dissertation), did the painting come first which then further inspired DGR to write a complementary poem or did DGR start with a poem and was the complementary painting just the iconographic meaning of his words?

In this dissertation I will focus on the interplay between both poetry and visual art, and how both influenced each other to create meaning, in the double works of DGR. Throughout my analysis, many different questions will be taken into account. For instance: why is DGR so interested in (creating) a bridge between visual art and poetry? Why does he combine the two? And why is he highly interested in certain religious themes and medieval painters such as Van Eyck and Memling?

DGR’s double works are mysterious and intriguing, leaving a sense of complex harmony for the reader/viewer, and the result of years of work by one of the nineteenth century’s most well- rounded intellectual painter-poet. I have selected ten double works derived from DGR’s three main publications: Poems (1870, 1881), The House of Life (1870, 1881) and Sonnets for Pictures and Other Sonnets (1850, 1870, 1881).

Each poem and painting or drawing forming a double work can be found in, respectively, Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 to this dissertation. Throughout this dissertation, whenever is being referred to a certain painting or drawing (which can be retrieved in Appendix 2), the use of the notion “figure x” or “(fig. x)” will be used. For instance, when discussing the painting The Blessed Damozel, the dissertation will refer to “(fig. 3)” which will allow the reader to go and view Figure 3 (The Blessed Damozel) in Appendix 2. Whenever discussing a double work as a whole (as opposed to only the painting or drawing), the name of the double work will appear in italics.

Chapter 2: Objectives and Method

2.1. Objectives

As indicated in the general introduction, I would like to focus on two different arts in this dissertation: visual art and poetry. I will investigate how the two sister arts are combined in the double works of the painter-poet1 DGR and relate that to the concept of ekphrasis as embodied by Pre-Raphaelite art of the nineteenth century. I expect to find differences but also important similarities between the two sister arts. It may be hypothesised that they both create their own meaning in order to distinguish themselves, however, I expect to find a unity between both which makes them consistently bound to one another in order to create (further) meaning for the reader/viewer of those works.

2.2. Method

In order to give a true and complete representation of DGR’s lifework and to show the evolution the painter-poet made from his earlier to his later double works, I have decided, for the purpose of this dissertation’s methodology, to select a number of DGR’s double works from each of the different phases or periods DGR’s life is commonly divided in by scholars.

Many different scholars have different opinions on how to divide DGR’s life into different phases. After having read many different findings, I tend to follow those of Herbert L. Sussman, Oswald Doughty and Lucien L. Agosta, who divided DGR’s career into three phases according to the development of his artistic career (in terms of the technique used to compose his paintings or the evolution in the themes in his works): a first phase from 1848 until 1853, a second phase from 1854 until 1862 and a third phase from 1863 until 1882 (Agosta 78). I have selected, for each phase of DGR’s artistic career, double works that, in my opinion, represent each particular phase.

For the first phase, I have selected The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1848-1849) (fig. 1) and Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1849-1850) (fig. 2) which were the first paintings made by DGR, and the accompanying poem, "Mary’s Girlhood.” The poem consists of two sonnets: Sonnet I (1848) and Sonnet II (1849) which formed part of the poem bundle Sonnets for Pictures and Other Sonnets (1850, 1870, 1881). Further, I will also discuss the double work The Blessed Damozel which consists of a painting (1873) (fig. 3) and a ballad (1847). The ballad first appeared in the Germ no. 2 (1850) and was later revisited several times before being published in Poems (1870). I have chosen to discuss The Blessed Damozel under the first phase as the ballad dates from such phase of DGR’s artistic career. However, as DGR

1 In this dissertation I will globally refer to DGR as a “painter-poet,” although I must clarify that one of his double works in this analysis consists of a drawing and not a painting.

created the painting during the third phase, the double work trespasses the three different phases in DGR’s artistic life and, therefore, makes it an even more intriguing double work to analyse.

For the second phase of DGR’s artistic career, I have chosen to discuss three double works. First, Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee, consisting of a drawing (1858) (fig. 4) and a poem (1869) and, secondly, The Passover in the Holy Family, consisting of a painting (1856) (fig. 5) and a poem (1870). Both poems formed part of the poem bundle Sonnets for Pictures and Other Sonnets. In addition, as Bocca Baciata links phase two and phase three, I have chosen to also analyse this double work. It consists of a painting under the title Bocca Baciata (1859) (fig. 6) and a poem, entitled “The Song of the Bower” (1860) which formed part of The Songs in The House of Life.

For the third phase, I have selected four double works: Venus Verticordia, consisting of a painting (1864-1868) (fig. 7) and a poem (1868), Pandora, consisting of a painting (fig. 8) and a poem from 1871, Astarte Syriaca, comprising a painting (1871) (fig. 9) and a complementary poem from 1881 and Proserpine, including a painting from 1874 (fig. 10) and a poem from 1875. The four poems were part of Sonnets for Pictures and Other Sonnets.

To allow for a better understanding of DGR’s double works, the cultural and historical background for these double works should be discussed. Chapter three will therefore firstly discuss the concept of ekphrasis and the impact it had on DGR’s double works. Secondly, since this particular form of poetry was often used by DGR, the Petrarchan sonnet will be explained. Next, the foundation and evolution of the PRB and the Pre-Raphaelitism in DGR’s works will be considered, since having a major impact on his double works. Fourthly, the main characteristics of DGR’s double works will be briefly examined. And finally, the different influences in DGR’s double works and the different themes which come back in such double works will be clarified in a fifth and sixth section of chapter three. As a final but important note, I have cautiously dealt with (auto)biographical data in my analysis as I decided that my approach should primarily be to analyse a double work on its own (thereby seeking to avoid being influenced or biased by other sources reviewed for the purposes of this dissertation, such as (auto)biographical data). Nevertheless, and as mentioned earlier, I believe it remains important to provide for the cultural and historical background within which the double works have been made by the painter-poet.

Finally, chapter four will contain the close readings (in detail) of the ten double works referred to above which will then allow me to complete this dissertation by providing my own findings and conclusions resulting from the research and analysis of these double works.

Chapter 3: Context

Before being able to understand DGR’s double works, one should understand the historical background and general context within which these double works have been made.

3.1. Ekphrasis and the Double Works of Art

In this section, the meaning of the term double works of art will be discussed through the concept of ekphrasis. Jerome McGann’s definition of a double work of art is as follows: “the creation of a poem to accompany and ‘interpret’ a picture, the creation of a picture to re-realize a poem” (The Game 21). Throughout the analysis of DGR’s double works, it will indeed become clear that the painter-poet felt the need to add a “correct” interpretation to his paintings/drawings in order to guide the reader/viewer in the direction DGR wanted his works to be read and viewed.

This recurring need to enter into some kind of a dialogue with the readers of his poems or the viewers of his paintings or drawings (i.e. the outside world), as will be evidenced in details in the close readings under chapter four, fitted in the historical context in which DGR lived and created his double works of art: the Victorian age. Isobel Armstrong argues that “the problems of agency and consciousness, labour, language and representation become central” in the Victorian age (7). DGR’s double works, that combine language (poetry) and visual representation (paintings) are all about that central Victorian thought. With respect thereto, Armstrong continues by stating that “relationships and their representation become the contested area, between self and society, self and labour, self and nature, self and language and above all between self and the lover” and that “the project of Victorian poetry is therefore the relationship between self and the world” (7). Armstrong further added that “gender becomes a primary focus of anxiety and investigation in Victorian poetry which is unparalleled in its preoccupation with sexuality and what it is to love” (7).

One could suggest that the production of a painting to explain a particular poem should not be necessary as the mind has the creative ability to form a picture of the poem without it literally being presented through visual art. Conversely, is a painting in need of a poem? And is a description relevant to contextualise a painting?

These questions bring us to the concept of ekphrasis. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ekphrasis means: “an explanation or description of something, esp. as a rhetorical device ... a literary device in which a painting, sculpture, or other work of visual art is described in detail” (“Ekphrasis”). Applying this to the double works of DGR, the detailed explanation or description of his visual art is achieved by means of the accompanying poems, thereby making it a double work.

In her article “Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern: the Invention of a Genre,” Ruth Webb argues that the meaning of the term ekphrasis changed over time. Webb indeed claims that “the way ancient writers conceived of ekphrasis was very different from the way in which we conceive of either description or ekphrasis in the sense of ‘description of an art object’” (12). Moreover, Webb claims that “the modern assumption that objects are the proper domain of description has influenced the way in which ekphrasis is often defined as a description of an ‘art object,’ a definition which it is now clear differs in spirit as well as in the letter from the ancient one” (12).

In contrast with this modern assumption, ekphrasis was more commonly described as follows in its earlier days: “a speech which leads one around ... , bringing the subject matter vividly ... before the eyes ...” (Webb 11). Webb explains that the ancient term ekphrasis “appeals to the mind’s eye of the listener, making him or her ‘see’ the subject-matter, whatever it may be ...” (11). Further, Webb asserts that “the nature of the subject-matter is of secondary importance” (12). The ancient definition for ekphrasis therefore rather referred to an overall experience than a description of the art object.

Webb continues her analysis and states that “throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ‘ekphrasis’ has undergone a process of gradual redefinition to conform to contemporary intellectual and aesthetic preoccupations” (17). Webb concludes that given the foregoing, there cannot only be one definition of ekphrasis as “apart from the broadest ‘writing on art,’ each critic is able, effectively, to redefine the term to suit his or her interests and to fit the corpus of works chosen as representative. Definitions of ekphrasis are thus in danger of becoming circular” (Webb 17).

The fact that other notions have been used by certain scholars to describe what is usually described as “ekphrasis” ((such as Peter Wagner’s ‘intermediality’ (qtd. in Webb 17)), underlines Webb’s position referred to above: as it is, inherently, such an ambiguous word, many different synonyms have been used throughout the years. For sake of completeness, I also refer to Vincent Leitch who used the notions of “intertext” and “intertextuality” according to which “the text is not an autonomous or unified object, but a set of relations with other texts” (qtd. in Porter 35).

Adopting this “intertextuality” to a certain art work of DGR, one could, after having carefully analysed such art work, detect different contexts that relate to such art work and that a single interpretation may therefore not be possible. Marysa Demoor covers this specific topic of intertextuality in her article about DGR and in which she explores the fact that the painter-poet (physically) inscribed two sonnets into the frame of The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1) and, by doing, created different contexts (6-7). Sara Phelps Smith argues that DGR, and the Pre-Raphaelites in general, have copied the idea “to enter into a dialogue with the viewer” from Medieval painters such as Van Eyck, as phrases were visible in the former’s paintings and also inscribed on the frames (qtd. in Demoor 7). Finally, noteworthy is that other scholars, such as John Pearson, used the terms

“semiotic structure” and “intertextual reading” to refer to the above mentioned practice (qtd. in Demoor 7-8).

Other scholars have also studied the concept of ekphrasis. James Heffernan, for instance, explored the term ekphrasis in his article “Ekphrasis and Representation” and stated that “ekphrasis is the verbal representation of graphic representation” (299). Moreover, Heffernan asserts that “ekphrasis is narrational and prosopopoeial; it releases the narrative impulse that graphic art typically checks, and it enables the silent figures of graphic art to speak” (304). I agree with Heffernan’s definition of ekphrasis as DGR’s poems provide a voice to the silent figures that are portrayed in his paintings.

Valentine Cunningham explored the term ekphrasis in his article “Why Ekphrasis” and demonstrates that ekphrasis can try “to overcome the tension ... the aesthetic tension, the tension of art, in the direction of positive presence, realism, truth” (71). According to Richard Stein, “the devotional, symbolic, mystic art that Rossetti praised and painted (at least in the first part of his career, and briefly at the end) creates a fundamental formal problem for a viewer: the relationships of parts, and of parts of the whole, are unclear” (784). Stein argues that “despite their sharp, clear finish, these paintings involve tension, an ambiguity of focus particularly puzzling because it seems to impart an energetic strength” (782). The critics mentioned above therefore argue a certain uncertainty and tension in a painting which, for the viewer, may form a burden for understanding the painting. I personally agree with Stein’s argument and follow his thoughts according to which DGR’s paintings possess a certain tension and can be perceived as ambiguous. Therefore, I also agree with Cunningham’s statement that ekphrasis can help to overcome this inherent tension. Ekphrasis can therefore be a means to harmonize visual art and poetry.

Ekphrasis had an undeniable central role in DGR’s double works. Nevertheless, one can question whether there was always a need to have a written story to accompany the picture (as the mind is or should be creative enough and capable of forming its own story). Furthermore, is DGR using ekphrasis for a specific reason? Is he convinced that the reader/viewer needs to be provided with a description of words or an image? Or was he not thinking at all about the needs of his audience nor the reception of his work (as he may not have had the urge to convey a message at all)? Was it rather all about his own inner creative and intellectual process and merely sharing his knowledge and his own talent of being a poet and a painter? In that stream of thought, I also think about Demoor’s article in which she discusses McGann’s argument who points out “how important the antiqued style of the sonnets and the identification of the pictured details as Medieval are in the process of historicizing this painting [referring to The Girlhood of Mary Virgin]” (qtd. in Demoor 8).

“Historicizing” can be understood as the use or incorporation of historical data, persons or concepts thereby giving a certain art work a historical background and, potentially, an intellectual twist.

Through the analysis of DGR’s double works, I will hopefully be able to fill in the true meaning of “his” ekphrastic work, although I believe a definite answer to this research question will remain difficult to provide as DGR was a master at combining different contexts within his double works.

Webb further stated the following:

For however divergent the modern definitions of ekphrasis are on the surface, they all have in common the fact that they are modern and are predicated directly or indirectly on a certain set of assumptions about description in particular and about texts in general: the perceived dichotomy between description and narration; the association of description with the passive object; a conception of literature as a text to be treated as an object of study rather than as a transcription or oral performance, which, even in its written form, can work a powerful effect upon a reader. (18)

In my view, this is in particular applicable to DGR’s double works and I can only assume that there are more hidden aspects in his work than one is able to see or read. Chapter four on the close readings will analyse ten double works of DGR in more detail (also in the context of the concept of ekphrasis).

DGR, however, did not always use ekphrasis. For instance, for The Blessed Damozel, the text preceded the painting. Consequently, one could say that the text was the inspiration for the painting. In other double works of DGR, the painting and the poem were sometimes created simultaneously. The fact that DGR did not follow a certain chronology suggests that he was not always that preoccupied with prioritizing one art over the other. It seems that both arts (when constituting a double work) are to be treated equally for DGR and, in the end, they should be interpreted concurrently.

As a reader or viewer of DGR’s double work, one should ask the question whether he actually wanted us to read his work as a whole (both poem and painting combined). Once placed together, however, I think the reader/viewer often seeks and is pleased to be able to unify both art works “to overcome the tension” (Cunningham 71). Without ekphrasis, one could still have difficulty to understand or discover the true interpretation or true meaning of the double work. Such tension is further accentuated since each viewer of a painting potentially has a different interpretation about the painting.

By combining visual art and literature, a unique dialogue exists with the audience. Initially, each person may potentially have a different interpretation of the work he or she is reading or viewing. But in the end, ekphrasis could ensure that the true interpretation or true meaning of the work of

art is made clear to the reader or viewer. In this respect, it is crucial that double works are not completely similar as communication starts whenever there are differences. Through these differences one is challenged to interpret and enter into a dialogue. A poem and a painting, in my opinion, are objects that come alive through that audience’s imagination and interpretation, sometimes guided through the use of ekphrasis.

Providing a sonnet for a painting (in the form of a narration or a description), may trigger a reader or viewer’s understanding or give the opportunity for further understanding. Stein argues that “he [DGR] conceived a poem as an arrangement of masses to be balanced as in a work of visual art”(792). Additionally, “the smallness of a sonnet frames its paradoxes and contradictions within a single unit, while its two-part structure provides the opportunity of working in several directions simultaneously” (Stein 792).

Yet, some critics also see it as a limitation. Brian Donnelly refers in his article to Lynne Pearce who says that “the sonnets ‘hammered to the frame’ (p. 41) are an impenetrable wall of words limiting the possibilities for interpreting the image by subjecting the spectator to a ‘didacticism’ . . . intended not to correct one viewing possibility so much as to impose the right one, the only one (p. 42)” (qtd. in Donnelly 476).

I disagree with Pearce’s statement as for me, the sonnets inscribed in the frame add extra value to the painting for the following reasons. Firstly, the sonnets provide an explanation which helps to better understand the painting: it supports the picture literally and figuratively. Secondly, it provides an intertextual reading which encourages and challenges the reader/viewer to combine the two sister arts and to look for similarities or differences between the poem and the painting and between the reader/viewer’s own interpretation and the interpretation of the painter-poet. According to me, it challenges the mind to think and look further, opposed to limiting it. Donnelly summarizes my thoughts: “Whichever method is employed, Rossetti's sonnets undoubtedly provide more questions than answers for the spectator of his work” (476).

3.2. The Petrarchan Sonnet

This part of my dissertation is dedicated to the Petrarchan sonnet form. As most of the double works in my analysis consist of sonnets, I decided to provide a context of the Petrarchan sonnet. In this dissertation not only sonnets, but also a song (“The Song of the Bower”) and a ballad (“The Blessed Damozel") will be analysed. I have, however, decided not to enter into further details regarding these poetical genres (as most of the double works discussed in this dissertation follow the Petrarchan sonnet form). In brief, the ballad has twenty-four stanzas and the song five.

DGR was one of the poets who adopted the Petrarchan sonnet and incorporated it in his poems. According to Stein, the Petrarchan sonnet was “his favorite form” (791). Carol Neely argues that the Petrarchan sonnet is a sonnet form originally discovered by the Italian poets Dante and Petrarch for whom “the focus of the works [is]: the poet-lover’s passion, the beloved who must be celebrated and won, and the poetry which unites lover and beloved” (359-360). Further, Amanda Holton clarifies that a sonnet consists of fourteen lines, divided into two parts (or stanzas): an octave of eight lines followed by a sestet of six lines (373, 381). Between the two stanzas there is a shift which indicates a movement between the first part of the sequence and the second, changing the plot and eventually revolving into a dramatic ending (Neely 360). The first part of the sequence investigates the relationship between the poet and lover and the second part moves into a restriction of solitude and transcendence (Neely 360).

According to John Holmes, DGR “shaped not only late Victorian literary culture but how late Victorian men and women perceived and comprehended themselves and their identities” (Preface). For Holmes, it is therefore important to have knowledge of the sonnet sequence for a greater understanding of “Victorian selfhood and its expression” (Preface). DGR’s double works are known for this self-exploration and expression. Holmes argues that DGR’s “preoccupations as a poet and those of the sonnet sequence as a tradition are those very questions of sexual identity and religious belief”(7).

The English sonneteers (including DGR) were not only poets but also lovers who used the genre and structure of Dante and Petrarch to deliver an aesthetic and romantic apprenticeship (Neely 384). Bernie Leggett claims that “what remains to be demonstrated is precisely how in notable instances DGR transposed line and shape, say, into rhythm and syntax” (241). DGR did not only follow but also reinvented the Petrarchan sonnet on three different levels (Holmes 3). Firstly, he diminished the narrative element in the sonnet thereby making the text’s and reader’s dependence on structural linearity less important. (Holmes 3). This causes the reader to get more ownership in the sonnet’s movement within one sonnet and in relationship to other sonnets (Holmes 3). Secondly, different themes, such as love and death, got a new meaning as, according to Holmes “Rossetti’s ‘love’ stands for the relations of sexuality and gender, and ‘death’ for the condition of mortality and the anxieties of belief and unbelief which it raises” (Holmes 3). The third level of the reinvention of the Petrarchan structure by DGR is to “invite the reader to trace aspects of his/her own self-perception in the sequence as it develops” (Holmes 3).

Using the Petrarchan sonnet form, he engaged with his predecessors such as Meredith, Barrett Browning, Dante and Petrarch (Holmes 3). In his analysis of DGR’s work in the light of the Petrarchan sonnet, Stein argues as follows: “perhaps most important, the sonnet belongs to an age of painters whose own use of symbols and detail became a model for Rossetti's style in painting and verse” (791). According to Stein the sonnet lines “evoke a ‘sequence of ideas’ behind the verse that has a

historical and formal validity that implies a world in which the contradictions of his art are accepted and reconciled” (791).

Moreover, Stein asserts that:

Even Rossetti's ballads, long poems with clear narrative development, represent a response to a traditional poetic form as appropriate as writing Petrarchan sonnets built around the conflict of first and final images. Ultimately, the poetry that implies such conceptions must be questioned on two fronts. Rossetti enjoyed much success in compressing images to suggest larger patterns of thought, but it is difficult to confine the evocations of language used in this way. (792)

3.3. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Pre-Raphaelitism in the Work of DGR

The third background against which DGR’s life and career as painter-poet needs to be seen is the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. One can only understand the evolution of DGR’s double works and to fully grasp the importance of these works within the context of the PRB.

Origin of the PRB

The founders of the PRB were DGR, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais (Doughty 5). Arthur C. Benson affirms that the PRB was formed in the Autumn of 1848 and describes the group’s central idea as “a revolt against conventionality” (18-19). However, Rosalie G. Grylls claims that the aims of the PRB were never “clearly defined” (26): “mainly it was Anti: against the enervating influence of Raphael’s followers down to contemporary Academicians with their trivial sentimentally and glossy surfaces; against the neglect of moral subject-matter and whatever obscured primary colours and definite outline on the canvas” (26). Despite the differences in opinions, the above mentioned scholars basically agree that the Brotherhood was a movement against conventionality.

According to Elizabeth Prettejohn, the name “brotherhood” was already known because of the society called “the Nazarenes”: “the German Brotherhood of St. Luke, formed in 1809 and later known as ‘the Nazarenes’, called attention to the Italian and Northern artists who flourished before 1500, as the Pre-Raphaelites were later to do” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 18). Benson adds that the fundamentals of the German Brotherhood were different from those of the PRB as “the basis of the institution seems to have been rather religious than artistic, and was a protest against the prevailing irreligion of the art and artists of the day” (18).

There are different opinions as to whether there was a clear relation between the PRB and the Nazarenes. When discussing Ford Madox Brown, a painter who was one of DGR’s mentor’s and “had come into contact with surviving members of the German Nazarene group” (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 25), Prettejohn believes that “his stories of the Nazarenes may have been an element in the formation of the group’s identity; the Nazarenes, too, had begun as disaffected art students, at the Vienna Academy, in 1809, and had their mark by adopting primitivist ideals” (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 25). On the other hand, Leonée Ormond declares that “it has been clearly established that the Pre-Raphaelites knew very little about these early artists, [the Nazarenes]” (154).

This being said, one thing is clear, as Robert de la Sizeranne asserts that the Brotherhood’s three members (Hunt “the Christian”, Millais “the painter” and DGR “the poet”) shared the same idea (46). They wanted to go back to the time before the painter Raphael (hence, “Pre-Raphaelite”) (43). The aim was to go back to the art before the fifteenth century which is known for its “‘primitive,’ ‘archaic,’ and ‘pictorial style’” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 18-19) as described also by de la Sizeranne: “the young men spoke of simple, individual, conscientious art employing neither formulae nor studio practices ... In this art, there is only the most meticulous, thorough imitation of nature possible, and the naïve expression of religious ideas” (43). Further, medieval art in particular appealed to them because of its themes and techniques.

The PRB wanted to break loose from “art schools and fashionable art of the day” (Doughty 5) and, in particular, from the academic formulas and the principles of Sir Joshua Reynolds (de la Sizeranne 7-8). Ormond refers in her article to the word “slosh” which the PRB used among them and which served a double purpose: “as a play on Reynolds's first name, Joshua, and as a mocking description of the techniques of those painters whose work they so much disliked, those who espoused broad brushwork, thick impasto, and strongly emphasized effects of mixed or combined colours” (Ormond 155).

“The List of Immortals” is another important aspect that should be mentioned in order to understand the principles of the PRB. In the book Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy, Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens clarify the “The List of Immortals”: “a select group of artists, writers and cultural figures ranked by their influence on and importance to the nascent movement” (Rogers and Stevens 67). The List, formed by Hunt and DGR, was the artistic “creed” for the Brotherhood (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 25). The List included artists and writers of the past who were Catholic, such as ironically enough Raphael and other High Renaissance artists (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 25) and artists such as “Chaucer, Dante, Boccaccio, Tennyson, and Keats” (Marsh 44). According to Marsh, the list “was an assortment of ‘great men’ from Western art and literature with Christ as the leading ‘Immortal’”(44). Overall, the list was “a

declaration of youthful independence” pursuant to which “the young painters would choose their own role models” (Marsh 44).

In 1849, the PRB did their first exhibition during which DGR showed his first oil-painting: The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1) (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 17). Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2) was shown to the public in 1850 (17). The style of both these works were described as “Early Christian” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 25). Although the Brotherhood’s List of Immortals was topped by Jesus Christ, Prettejohn asserts that “it would seem that the young artists were disavowing orthodox Christian faith in the life to come, and substituting human artistic achievement as the sole source of spiritual value” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 25) as reflected in PRB’s manifesto: “we, the undersigned, declare that the following list of Immortals constitutes the whole of our Creed, and that there exists no other Immortality than what is centred in their names and in the names of their contemporaries, in whom this list is reflected” (qtd. in Rogers and Stevens 67).

This rejection towards Christian doctrine is a returning aspect in the double works of DGR. Even though he incorporated religion in his double works, the painter-poet seemed to be “Catholic in sentiment but not in doctrine” (Marsh 47). This autobiographical characteristic of DGR will be further discussed and highlighted in section 3.6. and in my analysis of DGR’s double works in chapter four.

In the late summer of 1848, DGR wanted to expand his circle to include painters, drawers and sculptors such as Thomas Woolner, James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, and his brother William Rossetti, who had literary aspirations and was beginning to draw (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 25-27). According to Rosalie Glynn Grylls, another important member was William Morris, whose wife, Jane Morris (Jane Burden) would eventually become one of the central subjects for DGR’s pictures and poems (Grylls 235).

DGR’s most noticeable contribution to the Brotherhood (except for the foundation of the PRB) was the propagandist magazine called The Germ (Benson 27). From January to May 1850, this periodical “gave DGR the opportunity to publish his writings, both prose and poetry, including the poem The Blessed Damozel” (Doughty 6).

“The Germ was a Victorian little magazine, which functioned as an avant-garde periodical as advocate of their aesthetic and as showcase for their work” (Sussman, “The Language of Criticism” 21). The subtitle of The Germ was Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art and was later retitled Art and Poetry: Being Thoughts towards Nature (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre- Raphaelites 287).

The periodical had a short life of only four monthly issues. When the Brotherhood also fell apart, DGR decided to go his own way (de la Sizeranne 62).

The Use of Ekphrasis in the PRB

The Pre-Raphaelites were the masters in writing poems on pictures with the aim of combining both arts (Ormond 158). When a painting is filled with symbols, the reader/viewer might need an accompanying description to understand the meaning of those symbols. Whenever a poem provides an explanation of what there is to be seen and what the symbols stand for in the painting, the distance between the two sister arts becomes less remote. The “tension” I have discussed earlier, is “overcome.” By providing a textual context, the painting’s theme (which first was only hinted at) becomes completely visible, and by giving a detailed description of how one should look at the painting, the Pre-Raphaelites, and in particular DGR, prevent any other interpretation than the one they provide, allowing for a “whole-experience.”

3.4. The Main Characteristics of DGR’s Double Works

DGR’s work can be characterised as realistic, symbolic and full of details.

Realism

DGR’s work is called realistic because of two aspects. The first aspect is the incorporation of real-life characters in his paintings and, in particular, the use of family members, acquaintances, and lovers as models for his paintings (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 191-192). For instance, in The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1), DGR features his own mother and sister as St Anne and Mary (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 192). For Venus Verticordia (fig. 7), DGR asked a cook (DGR met on the street) to portray Venus (McGann, The Game 120). And in the paintings Astarte Syriaca (fig. 9), Pandora (fig. 8) and Proserpine (fig. 10), DGR’s model was Jane Burden, with whom he had a relationship (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 194, 205). Virginia Surtees asserts that the other two important women in his life were Elizabeth Siddall and Fanny Cornforth (16). As a result, the works become realistic as the historical or mythological subjects in his pictures are real-life people he knew. According to Prettejohn: “this suggests that the artists’ concern went beyond the question of appropriate social class, that they encompassed more specific physical or spiritual affinities between the models and the imagined characters” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 191).

Prettejohn notices that “Pre-Raphaelite images allow us to make either one of two imaginative leaps: we may jump from the image to the model ..., or from the image to the imagined character ...” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 195). This “leap” is something the reader/viewer constantly makes while reading and viewing DGR’s double works.

The second aspect that makes DGR’s work realistic is the “manifesto of ‘truth-to-nature’” (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 171). Prettejohn claims that “the world represented in pictures is uncannily like the ‘real’ world, yet it is clarified and concentrated” (The Art of the Pre- Raphaelites 171).

Symbolism

With respect to the second main characteristic of DGR’s double works, McGann asserts that the use of the symbols in DGR’s sonnets needs to be seen within the representative field rather than the interpretative field (The Game 29). Stein claims that DGR’s “themes are literary-episodes, or emotions, or moral qualities [which] have been abstracted into symbols” (784). According to McGann the “Christo-graphic symbology appears as a form of artistic expression and style rather than of religious concepts and ideas” (McGann, The Game 30).

Sussman describes biblical typology in the context of the PRB: “it is the extension of scriptural form, in the sense of establishing historicity through quotidian detail and the arranging of such detail into prefigurative patterns, that is continued in the sacramental symbolism of Brotherhood history painting ...” (Fact into Figure 10).

“Typology” is “The study and interpretation of types and symbols, originally especially in the Bible” (“Typology”). In DGR’s paintings, religious emblems are often (awkwardly) positioned between the spiritual and the human. The incorporation of Christian symbols is discussed for instance in the close readings on the double works The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and The Passover in the Holy Family. In these works, Christian symbols are placed in a human realistic setting which causes their meaning to change. By using typological symbolism the painter-poet brings spirituality and earth closer to each other. Hence, the traditional depiction of the Annunciation gets disturbed as DGR connects realism with spiritualism. I am indebted to George Landow’s findings who argues that “Rossetti empties typological symbolism of its basic Christological import, abstracts certain elements from it, and uses them for his own poetic ends” (“Life Touching Lips” 248). As “[DGR] did not accept the validity of Christian belief” (Landow, “Life Touching Lips” 265), he used this technique of combining the material with the immaterial. Moreover, Landow adds that “the explicit and skillful use of typology provided DGR with a means of making poetry and painting into sister arts, while at the same time it permitted him to solve some of the problems inherent in all realistic styles of painting” (“Life Touching Lips” 265).

Through the means of an accompanying descriptive poem the underlying symbolism of the painting, that is not necessarily visible in the painting, gets revealed. This brings us to another kind of symbolism. Chris Brooks calls the union between the conceptual and the perceptual “‘symbolic

realism’: Pre-Raphaelite images of what the world looks like are simultaneously accounts of what the world means” (qtd. in Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 171).

Detail

Finally, while analysing DGR’s poetry and paintings in more details, one can state that there is almost always a lot of detail. Prettejohn asserts that “Pre-Raphaelite detail has often been described as ‘microscopic’” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 171). “The unit of ‘truth’ in Pre-Raphaelite painting is detail, the smallest element that can be given its own distinctive identity” (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 171). McGann asserts that “Rossetti will seem an aesthete because he places a higher value on images than on concepts” (“Rossetti's Significant Details” 54). It could therefore be argued that the beauty of religious objects seemed to be more important to DGR than their actual (symbolic) meaning. “Rossetti's unconventional use of Christian details is his way of showing us the sublime value of enduring human affections and, correlatively, of man's infinite capacity for sensational response" (McGann, “Rossetti's Significant Details” 41). McGann continues by stating that “ultimately Rossetti is not interested in conveying a symbolic meaning through his details, but in reminding the reader of the fundamental value of sensations and appearances per se” (“Rossetti's Significant Details” 54).

I agree with McGann as this “value of sensation and appearances” (54) is strongly sensible in the works of DGR. Pre-Raphaelite paintings are filled with detail which make them look almost picture perfect or “photographic” (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 166). Surtees notices that DGR took photographs of the women he knew, such as Jane Burden, whose photograph was used for example to paint Astarte Syriaca (fig. 9) (15-16). Because of the great amount of detail in his works, the reader/viewer is forced to look at the picture from close-by. According to Prettejohn the details “demand an ‘active looking’; in the process they educate spectators to attend far more closely to the look of things than they would have thought possible” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 174). The combination of realism and the imaginative is visualised through the use of real-life objects like jewellery, tapestry, and real-life people portrayed by the women that DGR knew, placed in a beautiful imaginative world that DGR created for these objects and subjects. This supports my claim that DGR constantly combined two worlds: the material and the immaterial. Not only the picture but also the accompanying poem is usually full of detail pointing to what one should look at in the picture. By combining objects and details that are familiar to the reader/viewer within a historical symbolical context, a bridge between the real world and the imaginative world is formed in DGR’s work.

3.5. The Influences in DGR’s Double Works

Intriguing are also the different influences on DGR’s life as painter-poet and, in particular, on his double works. For the purpose of this dissertation, however, these influences will only be briefly discussed.

The greatest influence of all is maybe DGR’s own name, which consists of three different names each having a different meaning. According to Benson, “Dante” refers to his father’s favourite poet, Dante Alighieri and “Gabriel” to his father (3) and, in my opinion, “Gabriel” may also refer to the religious context related to the angel Gabriel and “Rossetti” to his Italian roots. Ironically, the three references are translated in his oeuvre: medievalism, religion, and Italian renaissance art. In that regard, it seems that his name defined the origin of his work. DGR grew up with a father who was an Italian exile, an art teacher and a Dante specialist, and a mother who was a devout High Anglican (Benson 3-4). Consequently, it is not difficult to guess his parents’ inspiration for their son’s name.

The painter-poet was of course not only influenced by the origin of his name but also by society, literature, art and religion. DGR grew up in an intellectual environment provided by his own parents and by the intellectual friends of his parents that surrounded him (Grylls 14-15). This environment encouraged DGR to grow up as an intellectual, interested in visual art and poetry (Benson 6-7).

Dante Alighieri

At the age of fifteen or sixteen DGR re-discovered Dante Alighieri for himself (Benson 8). Alighieri greatly influenced DGR’s work (Marsh 29). According to Stacy Johnson, Dante Alighieri is “the most significant source ... for Rossetti’s whole conception of art” (551). Johnson argues that “for Rossetti, Dante represented the highest development of that medieval world” (551). Moreover, “in Dante, Rossetti found a new sublimation of love in which the different states of the poet’s soul were expressed through a perfect woman” (Johnson 551). These different stages, or so called “phases,” are also discussed by Prettejohn who asserts that DGR had three women (Elizabeth Siddall, Fanny Cornforth and Jane Burden) representing each phase in his life embodying the painter-poet’s body and soul (Rossetti and his Circle 10). Siddall represented the first phase (the spiritual), Cornforth the second phase (the physical), and Burden the third phase (the spiritual and the physical) (Rossetti and his Circle 10). The influence of Dante Alighieri is for example depicted in the work I will later discuss in this dissertation, The Blessed Damozel, where the damozel “inhabits a Dantesque heaven” (Marsh 23).

William Blake

A third unmistakable influence on DGR was William Blake. Ormond affirms that DGR and his brother, William Michael Rossetti, bought a notebook once used by William Blake from which they gathered

information about Blake (155). Both artists shared similar thoughts as “Blake was known for being a rebel of the previous generation as he also had resentment towards the Royal Academy and its patronage that supported it” (Ormond 155). According to McGann, Blake became one of DGR’s “masters” (The Game 62) and according to Marsh, “his [DGR’s] imagination was drawn to extremes, with a Blakean idea of opposites and contraries” (47). Blake’s “transcendental art that has been dictated from eternity” (McGann, The Game 61-62) was incorporated in DGR’s double works. Blake’s works are transcendental, colourful, vibrant, and, according to David Fuller, “quasi-religious” (11- 12), similar to DGR’s paintings and drawings. Furthermore, similar to DGR, Blake used a lot of detail in his works and also wished his reader-viewer to see it intensively and from close-by (11). Based on these facts, it is evident that DGR was inspired by Blake.

Mythology

Finally, DGR’s double works breathe spirituality and mythology. Only by looking briefly at a DGR painting or by reading one of his poems, one is absorbed in a world of myth. Marsh asserts that “following Holst, in a Northern Gothic visual tradition that goes back to Hieronymus Bosch, he [DGR] began to produce his own drawings on supernatural themes” (29). The paintings contain “human figures in the company of spirits, [which] all represent the intersection between life and death, physical and spiritual, outer and inner” (Marsh 29). All these intersections are found in DGR’s double works. In relation to mythology, DGR’s double works incorporate supernatural settings, spirituality, sacred narration and ancient history, as Roman and Greek mythology become the subject matter. The mythology is for instance also evidenced in some titles of DGR’s double works.

3.6. The Themes in DGR’s Double Works

According to Dianne Macleod, “the problem of the survival of love is one of the main subjects of Rossetti's painting and poetry” (95). Macleod asserts that DGR “addresses himself to it in numerous works, beginning with his best-known early poem, ‘The Blessed Damozel (1848)’” (95). I personally do not entirely agree with Macleod that love is one of the main subjects in DGR’s double work. Next to love, the main themes are, according to me, religion, beauty and medievalism. This will be evidenced in chapter four on the close readings of DGR’s double works.

Religion

One of the main themes detectable in DGR’s double works is religion. According to Marsh, DGR “was never a convinced rationalist, much less an atheist ... biblical language was a second tongue and thus a means of conceptualisation ... his ideas of good and evil, sorrow and joy, bliss and despair

were inflected, if not shaped, by scripture ... Job, Ecclesiastes and Revelation were his favourite books” (27).

Additionally, Marsh says that “Gabriel [DGR] might have been drawn to the Anglo-Catholic blend of rigour and mysticism” (27). DGR refers to the Bible and hints at Christianity in various of his work. As I mentioned before, DGR was surrounded by religion: besides the religious spirit of the Victorian age, his mother was a devout (Benson 3-4) and also his sister, Christina Rossetti (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 192). Almost inevitably, DGR’s works often, in a symbolic way, incorporate and portray religious concepts such as profanity and spirituality.

DGR called himself an “Art-Catholic,” which seems to mean that the painter-poet referred to Anglo- Catholics “that supported pre-Reformation practices, so in art he endorsed forms and subjects from earlier ages” (Marsh 47). “[His art] was Catholic in sentiment but not [in] doctrine” (Marsh 47). Regarding the religious themes in DGR’s works, McGann also argues that “Rossetti treats his “Art Catholic” in purely artistic terms” (McGann, The Game 45). Landow asserts that “although his upbringing in a High Church household did not provide him with Christian belief, it did leave him with a sincere yearning for the order and coherence” (“Life Touching Lips” 254). Thus, DGR did not incorporate religious themes in his works to convey some kind of moral lesson or a religious message but rather to show his artistic capabilities of harmonising the real (physical) world with the profanity and spirituality, and most importantly, to show the beauty thereof.

Femininity and Beauty

Women are a recurrent subject in the works of DGR. The critic David Thomas notes that the women in DGR’s works are replicas of one another and that DGR’s motive was to repeat pleasure (78). Thomas claims that in replication DGR “found at once a field of creative action” (71).

The women in DGR’s oeuvre are depicted as the angel or the whore or even both (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 31). Prettejohn claims that the depiction of these women could be seen as his “protest against Victorian stereotypes of feminine virtue” and for his plea for “the separation between the spiritual and the physical in art” (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 30). Women stand for the artistic freedom of the artist as they embody both the body and soul of that particular artist. DGR, who was always combining poetry and painting, found a medium (women) to convey his message of being a poet and an artist. The women are portrayed as pure or as earthly and erotic but also unreachable as they were often portrayed as “absorbed in self-contemplation” (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 26). They have sensuous body parts, lips, uncovered necks, full bosoms, and long hair which evidenced their femininity and sensuality (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 26). Sensuality is often emphasized in the accompanying poem by accentuating each body part separately. When the viewer views a painting of DGR, the viewer’s attention is directly attracted

towards the face of the woman. Agosta refers to the women as “spirit incarnations”: the women in DGR’s paintings incarnate this spirit and “lure” the viewer’s attention into beauty and sexuality (85). DGR’s women “threaten the conventional boundary between female virtue and female vice” (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 31). Their sexuality acts as a power to hypnotize men. They are strong and have the capacity to bring the reader/viewer into their world. Helene Roberts, on the other hand, notices that DGR wants to emphasize the spirituality of women by putting the emphasis on their faces, not on their bodies: “they have sensuous faces, but faces lost in their own thoughts, not faces which smile enticingly at the viewer” (377).

In her article “D. G. Rossetti as Painter and Poet,” Johnson refers to Eva Tietz who explains that “the feminine figures in DGR’s compositions and poems are the visual center, the foreground whereas the pictorial detailed moonlit landscapes disappear in the background and merely becoming something symbolical to comment the figure” (qtd. in Johnson 12-13).

Tietz’s insights will become noticeable when analysing the double works of the third phase.

Medievalism

As I argued before, medievalism is a source of inspiration and recurring theme in the double works of DGR. Not only Dante Alighieri but also Van Eyck and Memling left their mark on DGR (Demoor 7- 8). On a trip to Flanders, together with his friend Hunt, DGR came in contact with the Early Flemish painters (Demoor 5). The painter-poet admired the Flemish painters and therefore incorporated their subject matters and the concept of ekphrasis by inscribing or attaching sonnets to the frame (as for example depicted in The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1)) (Demoor 8). This medieval incorporation gives DGR’s double works a melancholic sentiment which is shown in the way his subjects keep longing for the past. For instance, DGR uses “Dantean and Arthurian (medieval) watercolors” to evoke an disappearing emotion (Agosta 78). Prettejohn argues that “the vividness of Pre-Raphaelite technique could make the scene seem to be happening in the here-and-now, even when the picture was notionally set in the past” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 96).

Chapter 4: A Close Reading of DGR’s Double Works

As mentioned before, I have decided, for the purpose of this dissertation’s methodology, to select a number of DGR’s double works from each of the different phases or periods DGR’s life is commonly divided in by scholars. I followed Herbert L. Sussman’s, Oswald Doughty’s and Lucien L. Agosta’s division of DGR’s artistic career into three phases based on the developments DGR made throughout these three phases (in terms of the technique used to draw his paintings or the evolution in the themes in his works).

4.1. Phase One (1848-1853)

According to Sussman’s findings (Sussman, Fact into Figure 34), DGR’s first phase was a short, unpredictable “apprenticeship as a Huntian Pre-Raphaelite” which was distinguishable for its “typology and figural realism” (Agosta 78). In this first phase, (besides biblical typology) DGR also demonstrated his interest in late Medieval Flemish artists (Demoor 7). A trip to Flanders at the age of twenty-one would leave a great impression on DGR which would be felt in the art works of his early career (Demoor 7). The biblical typology, his interest in medieval themes and the choice for oil painting (as a particular technique of painting), are evidenced in the following double works of DGR’s first phase: The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, Ecce Ancilla Domini!, and The Blessed Damozel, in which one can also feel Dante Alighieri’s influence.

The Girlhood of Mary Virgin

I. This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect, God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee. Unto God's will she brought devout respect, Profound simplicity of intellect, And supreme patience. From her mother's knee Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity; Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect. So held she through her girlhood; as it were An angel-watered lily, that near God Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home, She woke in her white bed, and had no fear At all, — yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed; Because the fulness of the time was come.

II. (fig. 1) These are the symbols. On that cloth of red I' the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each, Except the centre of its points, to teach That Christ is not yet born. The books - whose head Is golden Charity, as Paul hath said - Those virtues are wherein the soul is rich; Therefore on them the lily standeth, which Is innocence, being interpreted. The seven-thorn'd brier and palm seven-leaved Are here great sorrow and her great reward Until the end be full, the Holy One Abides without. She soon shall have achieved Her perfect purity: yea, God the Lord Shall soon vouchsafe His Son to be her Son.

The first double work of the first phase I will discuss consists of a poem, called “Mary’s Girlhood,” and a painting, called The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1). The painting is “the first painting exhibited bearing the initials PRB” (Donnelly 475) and it also happens to be DGR’s first double work in general (McGann, DGR Collected Poetry and Prose 392).

The poem consists of two sonnets (sonnet I and sonnet II) which accompany the painting (McGann, DGR Collected Poetry and Prose 392 ). According to Donnelly “the paintings and the sonnets together provide an opportunity to develop a reading of the intertextual relationships at work in Rossetti's visual and verbal constructions” (475). As DGR wrote two different sonnets for the picture, this double work deserves a detailed analysis as to why the poet decided to do so and if and to what

extent they both differ. The two sonnets were printed on a gold leaf attached to the frame of the painting (McGann, DGR Collected Poetry and Prose 392). As such, the poem and its individual sonnets are a perfect example of ekphrastic poetry. I will first analyse sonnet I and subsequently discuss sonnet II.

In the title and the first line of the sonnet, DGR refers to biblical aspects depicting the religious context of his time. These biblical references start with line 1: “This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect”. In the painting the word “pre-elect” is visualized through the use of golden aureoles around Mary’s and her mother’s head. According to Landow, “Rossetti emphasizes that although Mary herself is still unaware of her fate, she was chosen in time long past — or, properly speaking, in a realm outside time — to bring the Saviour into human history” (Landow, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ‘Mary's Girlhood’). DGR refers to a past time in this poem through the use of the words “Gone is a great while” in line 2. Landow declares that “the sonnet ... stresses the fact that the event which his picture portrays occurred long ago: "Gone is a great while" since Mary was a girl embodying all virtue, and he thus moves her girlhood into the distant past” (Landow, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ‘Mary's Girlhood’”). When reading the first eight lines of the sonnet, the setting becomes clear: there is a “divine plan” that “builds towards that moment of annunciation,” which is visible in Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2) (Landow, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ‘Mary's Girlhood’”). The speaker of the poem pulls the reader through that plan. While the reader is reading the poem, a tension of time is sensible. The word “Till” in line 11 is important as a reference to time as the scene in this line of the sonnet changes into a different mood and setting since Mary wakes up in her bed. As I discussed earlier, this shift in the sonnet is typical for the Petrarchan sonnet form (Neely 360). Between the two stanzas there is a shift that indicates a movement between the first part of the sequence and the second (Neely 360). The plot changes and it evolves into a dramatic ending (Neely 360). In this respect, there is a noticeable difference with the painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1) as the painting depicts the time before the annunciation and not the moment on which Mary is in her bed. The words “till sunshine” in line 13 indicate how long she wept. Therefore, this stretch of time creates a tension by which DGR also creates some kind of empty space to be filled in by the reader. The words “patience” in line 6 and “peace” in line 8 depict a quiet setting that is visualised in the painting. It is also interesting to read “Profound simplicity of intellect” in line 5 by which DGR seems to suggest that Mary is intellectually challenged.

In the context of the Victorian age, this image of Mary is similar to the Victorian women who were portrayed as naïve, “faithful and hopeful” (line 7) as if they were awaiting their destiny (determined by Victorian and Christian rules). The double work is filled with symbols. In the painting, for example, the lily (that stands for purity, virginity and innocence) stands on a pile of books, held by an angel, in front of Mary. The books that are piled up in the painting represent Mary’s virtues (McGann, “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.” Rossettiarchive.org). These qualities are also mentioned in the poem:

Unto God's will she brought devout respect, Profound simplicity of intellect, And supreme patience. From her mother's knee Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity; Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect. (lines 4-8)

In sonnet II, the virtues are literally discussed: “those virtues are wherein the soul is rich” (line 6). The colour of the angels’ wings is red, just as the cloth hanging over the balcony, and Mary’s embroidery which is the same piece of cloth wrapped around the vase the lilies are in. The red colour of the cloth in the centre of the painting stands for “the robe of Christ’s Passion” (McGann, “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.” Rossettiarchive.org). In the painting Mary is staring melancholically at the lily (which stands for innocence and purity) held by a child-like angel. It is as if she knows she will soon lose her innocence and youth. In the poem, DGR refers to Mary as an “angel-watered lily” (line 10) who “Grows and is quiet” (line 11). The viewer can interpret this “growing” as the growth of Mary’s girlhood into womanhood. The voice of the poem describes Virgin Mary as a devout: “Unto God’s will she brought devout respect” (line 4). When comparing the sonnet with the painting the alignment is clear: Mary is depicted at an embroidery table with her mother next to her. The calm atmosphere in the sonnet is visible in the painting as Mary is calmly sitting on a chair looking in front of her. In the sonnet this tranquil atmosphere is perceptible from line 1 to 11. However, as indicated earlier, in line 11 this quiet sphere changes by the use of the word “Till” (line 11). As from that moment one the frame shifts. The iconographic Virgin Mary who is sitting in her peaceful and spiritual frame shifts into another frame where she wakes up in a bed and has the experiences of an earthly human being. She experiences “no fear” (line 12) / has “wept ... and felt awed” (line 13). By using the word “till” a sudden tension is created which is felt in the sonnet but also visible in the painting. The poem thus shifts between spiritual and earthly aspects experienced by the female subject.

In sonnet II the first lines from 1 to 8 refer to Mary who is awaiting Christ: “That Christ is not yet born” (line 4). The second part of the sonnet, from line 9 to 14, is about the Annunciation as the poem refers to “God the Lord / Shall soon vouchsafe His Son to be her Son” (lines 13-14). In the painting, the viewer can see, behind the balcony, a heaven consisting of grape vines and the holy dove. However, in front of the balcony, the viewer is encountered with an earthly setting as Virgin Mary and her mother are real-life characters placed in a spiritual setting. Virgin Mary was modelled by “the devout Christina Rossetti” (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 192). Harold L. Weatherby argues that “one of the most peculiar qualities of Pre-Raphaelite art is the way in which highly realistic and deliberately allegorical details are combined” (12). Therefore, the balcony forms a division between the two worlds, in which the grape vine forms a bridge penetrating the earthly setting. Consequently, because of this grape vine, heaven and earth are not strictly separated. The dove, sitting on the grape vine, also plays an important role of being a bridge figure as it sits in

between two worlds. In this double work, DGR shares his knowledge about the Bible, medieval and Renaissance art. In this case, one could state that he is providing a historical context for his work.

As the painting is accompanied by two sonnets, the question rises if the painting would have had such an allegorical message without them. Considering this thought, applying ekphrasis to sonnet I and its related picture is important to understand the painting. The same applies for sonnet II which is equally important to explain the painting as well. Additionally, I would like to quote Kathryn Ready who claims that the sonnets of “Mary’s Girlhood” are famous for ”their dense symbolism and interpreted as didactic tools to instruct the spectator in his or her viewing of the painting” (qtd. in Donnelly 478). Furthermore, Ready asserts that the sonnets “have been read as commentaries on Rossetti's artistic practice itself, embodying the concept of a devotional approach to artistic and poetic work” (qtd. in Donnelly 478). Donnelly mentions that sonnet I “provides a narrative of sorts for the scene depicted in the painting, [and] Sonnet II addresses the symbols included in the design” (478). Overall, Donnelly claims that “together the sonnets articulate the complex array of visual and verbal strategies Rossetti utilizes to construct meaning” (478). These scholar’s findings are in line with my research question and my findings after having analysed this double work: the sonnets and the painting are utilised together to create (further) meaning.

Aaron Kashtan argues that the “second sonnet clarifies the proper reading of a painting which a contemporary spectator might have found difficult” (“Pre-Raphaelite Approaches to Ut Pictura Poesis: Sister Arts or Sibling Rivalry?”). Here I can assume that DGR had the necessity to provide an interpretation for his audience. Kashtan continues by stating that “it does so in an aesthetically pleasing way: its attractive verbal imagery and rhythm mirror the equally attractive pictorial imagery and compositional rhythm of the painting” (“Pre-Raphaelite Approaches to Ut Pictura Poesis: Sister Arts or Sibling Rivalry?”). Furthermore, “the sonnet thus functions as an aesthetic object in itself, despite being clearly subordinated to the aesthetic object it explains” (Kashtan, “Pre-Raphaelite Approaches to Ut Pictura Poesis: Sister Arts or Sibling Rivalry?”).

I also agree with Kashtan’s findings that both painting and poem mirror each other. In relation to the concept of ekphrasis, for which “narrative” and “description” are two important concepts, the first sonnet is a narrative of the story that is told in the painting, whereas sonnet II is rather a literal description of what is to be seen. Therefore, the visual and the narrative become one. This combination between the visual and the verbal puts the reader/viewer in a situation in which he can no longer see these as separate: “the structural composition of the sonnet itself is crucial to this mode of reading and viewing, its form providing Rossetti with a template within which to imagine a temporal narrative through a spatial image” (Donnelly 478). Donnelly suggests that “the idea of doubling, that would become so central to Rossetti's artistic manifesto is inherent in the sonnet form, particularly that which [sic] dominated the nineteenth-century, the Petrarchan” (479). The reader can detect this Petrarchan sonnet form in sonnet I and II. In relation to intertextual reading,

Donnelly asserts that “what is provoking about Rossetti's engagement of both visual and verbal images to create meaning is the possible production of another kind of text, an intertext that is unique to the painter-poet” (475). DGR manages to combine visual art and poetry in a way that they become inseparable. As the poems are pinned to the painting, Donnelly sees the poems as a medium to direct the reader/viewer: “the paired sonnet and painting reconfigure the tension inherent in the relation between Rossetti's two paintings of the Virgin Mary and the sonnets ‘Mary's Girlhood,’ through a secularization of the narrative of the binding relationship between Mary, God, and Gabriel that underpins those works” (477).

Ecce Ancilla Domini!

(fig. 2) II. These are the symbols. On that cloth of red I' the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each, Except the centre of its points, to teach That Christ is not yet born. The books - whose head Is golden Charity, as Paul hath said - Those virtues are wherein the soul is rich; Therefore on them the lily standeth, which Is innocence, being interpreted. The seven-thorn'd brier and palm seven-leaved Are here great sorrow and her great reward Until the end be full, the Holy One Abides without. She soon shall have achieved Her perfect purity: yea, God the Lord Shall soon vouchsafe His Son to be her Son.

The painting Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2) is also linked to the poem “Mary’s Girlhood.” The painting is a literal representation of the second part of sonnet I, the sestet. It enters into play at the turning point in the sonnet represented by the word “Till” (line 11). When observing the painting, the first thing that the viewer sees is a plain coloured canvas with little touches of colour: a blue cloth, a red piece of broidery, the red hair of the two female subjects, and the two golden aureoles. Compared to The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1), this painting does not have a peaceful atmosphere. It is sober and lifeless. The viewer sees Mary in her bed pushed against the wall. Prettejohn asserts that DGR demonstrates in this painting “extreme simplifications and awkwardness ... [that] convey a psychological intensity” (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, 51-52). By forcing the subject in this

position, the painter-poet conveys the message that the Virgin is not at ease (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 51). According to me, she looks scared, although, in sonnet I, one can read that she “had no fear” (line 12). She also looks sad, as if she has wept. In the sonnet this is affirmed by the words “yet wept till sunshine” (line 13). The painting is not entirely equal to the poem. For instance, in sonnet I, Mary awakes alone. However, in the painting, Mary is not alone as the angel Gabriel is standing in front of her. Instead of kneeling (as in the traditional iconography), he is standing in front of her with a lily in his hands. Mary is gazing at the lily (the flower that stands for purity and innocence). The gaze can be interpreted as the realisation of Mary that her innocence is gone (as she understands that she will have a child and that she is no longer a young girl). The red colour in combination with the white lily “makes a striking visual emblem for the conception of a child by a virgin” (Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites 51). Unlike the painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1), where Mary was looking at the flower as a personification of her innocence, in Ecce Ancilla Domini!, Mary is no longer innocent. In Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2), the angel Gabriel is depicted as a tall man standing in front of Mary. The figure Gabriel, who dominates the whole painting, seems to be in charge of the lily. Symbolically he is in charge of Mary’s innocence which gives him a powerful role. According to Linda Nochlin, this is a “perverse revision of Ecce Ancilla Domini! ... [as] a cowering female is set in opposition to a towering male figure-but ..., the fallen woman refuses to ‘know’ the messenger and sends him away instead of receiving glad tidings” (152). For that reason the painting breathes a tense atmosphere that is ambiguous, as the dominant man is in the woman’s bedroom. “The power relations” between man and woman in the Victorian age is emphasized (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 26). By reading the sonnets, the reader can only assume that this painting is a depiction of the Annunciation: she will achieve “Her perfect purity” (sonnet II, line 13). When only reading the entire poem, and not looking at the painting, one would consider the lily in Gabriel’s hand as something he will give to her. However, when carefully analysing the painting in more detail, one could assume that Gabriel is not giving the flower to her but rather taking it away from her: he is in control of her destiny. Further, Donnelly states that the composition in the painting is important as women become “physically vulnerable [by positioning them in] awkward architectural spaces” (477). This vulnerability is definitely visible in Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2) through the body language of Mary. In my opinion, the painting breathes more ambiguity than the poem. In this painting, the depiction of earth and heaven is also juxtaposed. However, heaven is much less visible as Mary is confined in a room and can hardly look outside. Although there are many earthly connotations, the room in which Mary is situated is not earthly at all since Christian symbols surround her. The white dove at the window and the lily are only small details to bridge the gap between earth and heaven. The similarity between the double works The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini! is the use of time in sonnet I. Time is visible in the painting through the use of different symbolic objects that are indicating what is going to happen,

for instance the Lily (that is “growing”). In sonnet I the use of a timeframe is visible through the use of words as “Till dawn” (line 11) / “till sunshine” (line 13) and “fulness of the time was come” (line 14). In these lines DGR emphasizes the importance of the past, the present, and the future.

Overall, after analysing the two paintings and the two accompanying sonnets in detail, I can conclude that each of these works is a good example of a double work. The influence of the religious environment in which DGR lived and worked as a painter-poet is clearly apparent in this double work because of the use of biblical typology. Further, the painter-poet presents his thoughts about divinity and humanity (two separate worlds) by combining both in these works. In addition, DGR incorporates, in these works, the tension with respect to religion and women in the Victorian Age.

The Blessed Damozel

Given the length of the poem, I have chosen not to include it here. Please see the Appendix to this dissertation for the complete poem.

(fig. 3)

The poem “The Blessed Damozel” is atypical compared to other love poems which date from the Victorian age as DGR reversed the conditions of the grief of the lover on earth by giving utterance “to the yearning of the loved one in heaven” (Marsh 23). I am indebted to the thoughts of McGann who emphasizes that the damozel’s “story is framed by the parenthetical statements of her earthly lover, whose loneliness is the image of hers just as her desire to be reunited mirrors his” (“Rossetti’s Significant Details” 49). McGann asserts that the relation of the damozel and her lover consists of love and knowledge which is “replicated as a relation between the poems and the pictures” (The Game 25).

In relation to ekphrasis, The Blessed Damozel’s poem preceded the painting which is unusual for DGR as for all the other works in this dissertation the painting came first or at least simultaneously. Agosta argues that “The Blessed Damozel had to wait for her portrait to be made until Rossetti’s evolving aesthetic ideas had reached that culmination which would allow him to create her as completely on canvas as he had tried to create her in the poem” (80). As the sonnet of “The Blessed Damozel” was written years before the painting (in DGR’s first phase, when the painter-poet was only a young inexperienced man (Agosta 80)) this double work is a good “bridge work” between the three artistic phases of DGR.

Four stanzas of the sonnet were inscribed into the frame which was designed by DGR (McGann, “The Blessed Damozel.” Rossettiarchive.org). This inscribing on frames demonstrates the influence of the early Flemish painters, such as Van Eyck did (Demoor 7). Andrea Henderson argues the medieval influence (see also section 3.6 on the themes in DGR’s double works) as “for this painting Rossetti did not use one of his modern frames but a suitably historicist one, a tabernacle frame, in keeping with its medieval subject” (921). The frame does not only support its medieval subject, but

it also supports the idea of confinement as it goes through the lover and the beloved, as if it is a second bar, under the golden bar that the damozel is leaning on (Henderson 921). Henderson also remarks that the frame is “repeating the motif of the golden bar in a medium extrinsic to the painting, implicates Rossetti’s damozel’s distress” (921). These are interesting findings in order to understand the uses of the frame. It is used to literally and figuratively visualise the separation between the two lovers and their two worlds: the physical and the spiritual world. Furthermore, the frame symbolises the prison of the damozel’s mental state. The frame or the sonnet acts as a metaphor of isolation or alienation. I also discussed this in Ecce Ancilla Domini! where Donnelly referred to “awkwardly architectural spaces” (477) in which the subject is positioned.

One could argue that DGR’s painting for “The Blessed Damozel” took a long time to be made because the poem by itself could actually function as a visual object on its own. This visualisation starts with the first stanza:

The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven. (lines 1-6)

The stanza is a complete description of the damozel. The woman is leaning over a “gold bar of Heaven” (line 2). The reader can immediately identify the woman as heavenly and spiritual. As the woman is leaning over the bar, this bar can be seen as the separation between heaven and earth. The subject is surrounded by a heaven surrounded by flowers: “three lilies in her hand” (line 5) and “stars in her hair” (line 6). The lilies refer to purity and chastity as I discussed in DGR’s previous double works. According to Marsh, the awaiting woman with the stars and the lily are a hidden political reference to the painter-poet’s heritage (24). Marsh argues that the interpretation would be “Italy longing for liberation – the stars loosely standing for her regions” (24). In this case, the longing of the woman can be interpreted as a longing for freedom. Furthermore, this can be seen as DGR’s longing for poetic freedom.

The woman is described as if she is lost far away in thought “eyes were deeper than depth” (line 3) and “waters stilled at even” (line 4). Time is standing still and the woman is weeping and spending time leaning over the bar. This demonstrates that she wants to be with her lover. Paul Lauter argues that “the lover mistrusts his qualifications for heaven, perhaps even disbelieves the heaven he wishes exists, and his projection of the lady of course reflects these doubts” (347). Consequently, heaven and belief are questioned. The dichotomy, and especially the distance, between heaven and earth is emphasized by the presence of the sonnet later inscribed into the frame designed by DGR. According to Henderson, “the sonnet dramatizes the distance between objective and subjective

perception, and while the objective point of view, associated with the damozel and the heaven in which she resides, dominates, it is the subjective point of view associated with the lover that is ultimately revealed as the more knowing and encompassing to the two” (921).

Moreover, further throughout the poem it becomes clear that the woman is sad because she is separated from her earthly lover and wishes her lover to join her. This is depicted in the sonnet when the woman asks the earthly lover to join her in heaven: “I wish that he were come to me” (line 67), and from line 73 until line 78:

When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I'll take his hand and go with him To the deep wells of light; As unto a stream we will step down, And bathe there in God's sight. (lines 73-78)

In lines 127-132, the damozel asks Christ the Lord “Only to live as once on earth” (in which one could feel DGR’s crisis of religious belief):

There will I ask of Christ the Lord Thus much for him and me:— Only to live as once on earth With Love,—only to be, As then awhile, for ever now Together, I and he.” (lines 127-132)

DGR’s female subject also seems to have a strong desire to be human. The woman has two faces: earthly and angelic. As she is presented in Heaven (see for instance “gold bar of Heaven” in line 2) with “three lilies in her hand” (line 5) the reader derives from this setting that the damozel is angelic.

However, in the next stanza, the description of the woman goes on but this time much earthlier and more sensual: “her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem” (line 7) refers to the woman not wearing a girdle that is attached to the hem.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn. (lines 7-12)

Here even the “hem” can be interpreted as another “border” between heaven and earth, soul and body. These different “borders” and “dichotomies” are recurrent in DGR’s oeuvre.

In line 8, “No wrought flowers did adorn” refers to the woman not having ornamental holy flowers, which makes her earthly. However, the white rose she got from Mary (“Mary’s gift” in line 9) makes

her holy. Once again the speaker is emphasizing that the woman finds herself between earth and heaven. The physicality is visualised in: “hair” (line 11) / “like ripe corn” (line 12), the ripe corn being a metaphor for a sensual “ripe” woman.

In the next stanza, the emphasize is again on heaven as the speaker is referring to “One of God’s choristers” (line 14) and “to them she left” (line 17). The choristers are the angels that are guarding the border between heaven and earth from which the damozel is leaning.

Herseemed she scarce had been a day One of God's choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers; Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years. (lines 13-18)

From line 19 to line 24, the reader’s attention is again pulled between heaven and earth. The border is created by the woman’s hair that is leaning over the bar.

(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.) (lines 19-24)

Thus, the damozel’s hair is making a bridge between heaven and earth. As DGR put a dash after “o’er me” and “her hair” (line 21) time is stretched and a distance is created. As a result, “the reader is not dependent from the structural linearity and ... the movement of the sonnet is left in the hands of the reader” (Holmes 3).

The sonnet is filled with indicators of time and space demonstrating the movement and distance between the two worlds of the lover and the beloved. Some examples of references to time are: “apace” (line 24) / “tides of day and night” (line 33) / “Time” (line 50) “pause” (line 94) / “endless unity” (line 100) / “as the awhile , for ever now” (line 131). The words that refer to space and movement are depicted in the following lines: “Space” (line 28) / “high” (line 29) / “downward” (line 29).

The distance and movement in the poem are not only created by the choice of words but also by the choice of narrator. The damozel’s situation is sometimes described from the lover’s perspective but sometimes also from the beloved’s perspective thereby changing the narrator of this sonnet. As the lover and beloved alternate in speaking, the distance between earth and heaven (which is also clear in the painting) is emphasized in the sonnet. The reader moves between two worlds and can place himself/herself in the lover or beloved’s perspective. To understand who is actually talking,

DGR uses the first person and the use of parentheses. In the following stanza the voice between brackets is the lover.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path Was vague in distant spheres: And then she cast her arms along ...... And wept. (I heard her tears.) (lines 139-144)

In the next stanza the voice of the first person is the beloved.

‘When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I'll take his hand and go with him To the deep wells of light; ...... And bathe there in God's sight. (lines 73-78)

The description of the blessed damozel in the poem matches the painting as the viewer can see a woman with stars in her hair leaning on a golden bar surrounded by white lilies and three angels who are guarding the bar. Under the bar, one can see the earthly lover lying in the grass. The division in the poem between heaven and earth, lover and beloved, is shown in the painting through the painted golden bar. Moreover, the same distance between the two worlds and between the two subjects is visible in the painting as it is in the poem. Earth is drawn with sober colours whereas heaven is full of splendour and rich colours. The crisis between the lover and beloved is the realisation that they cannot be together. The crisis of the damozel is an inner one: she realizes that being in heaven is not enough as her earthly desire is still present and cannot be fulfilled. In the painting, the viewer can see a slight difference as this crisis is not that noticeable as it is in the sonnet. In the painting, the viewer can see a woman resting her arm on the bar looking down but she is not really making an effort to break free as she lets the angels sit beneath her, guarding her bar. It is as if she acknowledges that she will never be with her lover and is at ease with it. In the poem however, this boundary between the two is more dramatically depicted as she “laid her face between her hands, / and wept” (lines 143-144). The golden bar even turns into “golden barriers” (line 142) which stand for a blockade unable to break through.

This is a perfect example of a double work as the painting and poem are almost exact copies of each other. But as mentioned earlier, there are some differences which is not surprising since a double work only comes alive when there are differences provoking the reader/viewer to enter into a dialogue with both sister arts. The poem can stand as a separate object and so can the painting. However, by bringing both together, an interaction between the two sister arts is created. The painting comes alive due to the dialogue in the poem.

The Blessed Damozel trespassed DGR’s three phases because it incorporates the religious typology of the first phase, the “Dantesque” influence of the second phase (Marsh 23), and the dichotomy of heaven and maiden from the third phase. Johnson argues that “the tension ... [between the Virgin Mary and the pagan Venus] can be embodied within a single work, as it is in the later and rather lush versions of the heavenly maiden, especially the damozel ...” (11).

Conclusion

After analysing the three double works of DGR of the first phase, the conclusion is that he was a skilful poet and painter with a broad knowledge of the Bible and medieval art. In this context, the three double works often represent both earthly and spiritual matters thereby providing for a closed link between both worlds. The subjects in these double works are isolated in their own (divine) world and long for a past which is long gone. Related to this, throughout the poems of the first phase analysed earlier, it has become clear that they are all characterised by an inherent tension as the painter-poet often changes between the past, the present and the future within his poems.

4.2. Phase Two (1854-1862)

By reference to Sussman’s findings, Agosta believes the second phase is characterised by a gradual move away “from Pre-Raphaelite typology and figural realism to an evocation of evanescent emotion in the Dantean and Arthurian watercolors” (Agosta 78). Agosta refers to Doughty who says that: “these medieval watercolors and the ethereal drawings of Elizabeth Siddal, also from DGR 's second phase, are ‘now rightly recognized as his best pictorial work’” (qtd. in Agosta 12). During phase two, according to Doughty, DGR’s double works consisted of watercolours, Dantesque and Arthurian subjects (9-10).

For DGR’s second phase I have chosen to discuss Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (fig. 4), made out of pen and ink (McGann, “Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee.” Rossettiarchive.org) which reminds us of the medieval subject matter, The Passover in the Holy Family (fig. 5), made out of watercolours and for which Elizabeth Siddal acted as model for the Virgin (McGann, “The Passover in the Holy Family: Gathering Bitter Herbs.” Rossettiarchive.org) and thirdly, Bocca Baciata which consists of an oil painting (fig. 6) of a sensual woman, which indicates a shift in technique and in theme.

Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee

‘Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair? Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreath, lips, and cheek. Nay, not this house,—that banquet-house we seek; See how they kiss and enter; come thou there. This delicate day of love we two will share Till at our ear love's whispering night shall speak. What, sweet one,—hold'st thou still the foolish freak? Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair.’

‘Oh loose me! See'st thou not my Bridegroom's face That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss, My hair, my tears He craves to-day:—and oh! What words can tell what other day and place Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His? (fig. 4) He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!’

The next double work I will discuss is Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee. The house of Simon the Pharisee, who according to the Gospel Luke (7:36-50) invited Jesus to have dinner but forgot the customs that went along with hospitality (“bible gateway”) is visualised in DGR’s painting. Therefore, this painting is an allusion to Luke (7:36-50), although, DGR also added something of his own in the painting: a woman who wants to enter into the house of God but is held back.

This work is comparable to the double works The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini! as it also has a biblical setting. When analysing the drawing, one can see Mary Magdalene standing outside a building seemingly wanting to go inside, just as the title of the drawing indicates “at the door of Simon the Pharisee.” The building has lilies on it and the face of Jesus Christ, referring to this building as being a divine place. As the reader/viewer knows this is the house of Simon the Pharisee, one can derive that the central figure, Mary Magdalene, is the woman who has to make a choice to leave the earth for the divine. The whole depiction is ambiguous, as divine images and earthly images are blurred. For instance, the head of Jesus Christ is depicted on the outside wall of the building. As a result, Jesus Christ is between the spiritual and the physical. This is similar to the bridge figures in other double works, in particular the grape vine, depicted in The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1) and the holy dove in Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2). Mary Magdalene is standing outside the house and a man and a woman are holding her tight to prevent her from entering the house. Once again, similar to The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1) and Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2), there is a clear pictorial division between a human world and a divine world. In the poem, this split between the physical and the divine is depicted through common symbols like the rose (which stands for

earthly love). I am indebted to Leggett who notices that the dichotomy between spirituality and worldliness also sits in the sonnet form DGR uses for this work:

To begin with, the Italian sonnet form allowed him to divide the poem roughly in halves – by having the octave spoken by the lover and the sestet by Mary Magdalene. The dialectical opposition in the poem was thus accomplished by an expression of worldliness in the first eight lines, of spirituality in the remaining six. The octave creates a strong sense of Mary Magdalene's detention upon the steps. In reading it, one encounters an effective use of "stops."(243)

Analysing the sonnet in more detail, the reader can read the following lines:

The voice in the poem asks Mary Magdalene why she wants to get rid of her human side: “Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?” (line 1) / “Nay, be thou all a rose” (line 2). The voice also refers to human aspects such as “wreath, lips, and cheek” (line 2). The worldly speaker goes on by saying that he does not want Mary Magdalene to enter the house: “Nay, not this house” (line 3).

In line 5, it becomes clear that the speaker is Mary Magdalene’s lover as he wishes she would stay so they can spend the day together: “This delicate day of love we two will share” (line 5). In line 6, the word “Till” (like in “Mary’s Girlhood” Sonnet I) suddenly appears. The lover refers to a timeframe that starts with the word “till” (line 6) and ends with the word “night” (line 6). This exploration of time is similar to “Mary’s Girlhood” Sonnet I, of which an important aspect was the emphasis on time, which created a tension. In Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee this same tension is visualized in the poem, and in the painting through the composition of the different subjects surrounding Mary Magdalene. In line 6, the lover confronts Mary Magdalene being “the foolish freak” (line 7). The words “foolish” and “freak” show that the lover has negative feelings towards Mary Magdalene. This representation of an ignorant girl can be compared to Mary’s Girlhood, in relation to which I also discussed the sceptic perspective of DGR on Christianity. The woman who opts for the divine is considered to be absurd. This explores DGR’s personal reflexion upon Christianity and his point of view towards the role of women according to Victorian standards.

In “Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee,” DGR follows the traditional Petrarchan sonnet form, in which the first eight lines end with a conclusion: “Nay, when I kiss thy feet they’ll leave the stair” (line 8) and in which the new idea in line 9 is introduced through a change in speaker: from the lover to the one who is loved, Mary Magdalene.

In the sestet she gives her earthly lover a full reply: “That draws me to Him” in line 10, where “Him” is referred to the divine (as it is written with a capital letter), and in line 14 (“He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!”). This dramatic dialogue is filled with sad emotion and tension (“let me go” in line 14), and symbolic matters (“His feet my kiss” in line 10), referring to Jesus Christ whose feet are kissed in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The dramatic dialogue in the sonnet is visualized in the dramatic scene of the drawing in which the tension is depicted through the positioning of Mary Magdalene towards her lover. The interaction between the poem and the painting affirms that this is a double work. As I mentioned before, and similar to “Mary’s Girlhood,” the importance of time is also emphasized in this double work. In the sestet, DGR forces the reader to stand still in the present and makes the reader go back and forward in time by using words like “what other day and place” (line 12).

After the close reading of this painting and sonnet, I can conclude that the conflict between heaven and earth was something that seemed to have occupied DGR. Therefore, I agree with Stein, referring to Doughty, who discussed that DGR’s “double metier again and again became a symbol of his most intense conflicts” (775). This is another double work in which he explores the inner struggle a subject has when facing a choice. She has to choose to be earthly or divine, bad or good, a fallen woman or an angel. DGR’s works visualize the conflict of being in between two worlds. In a Victorian context this is easy to understand as DGR was submersed by Christianity, as I explained in the section about religion. “For DGR, the Renaissance (and its attendant religious reformations) represented a great collapse of spiritual values and the emergence of ‘soulless self-reflections of man's skill’ in art and culture” (McGann, “The Passover in the Holy Family (For a Drawing).” Rossettiarchive.org). McGann affirms that “DGR is not a Christian, for he is as interested in pagan and polytheist spiritual presences as he is in Christian and monotheist ones” (“The Passover in the Holy Family: Gathering Bitter Herbs.” Rossettiarchive.org). By referring to two worlds (heaven and earth), DGR demonstrates that he is interested in both pagan and spiritual matters. In my opinion, DGR’s main interest is not to convey a moral or a religious message but to share his inner struggle between heaven and earth, spirituality and the earthly or bodily, the soul and the body. As the painting is filled with pagan and religious symbols, DGR needs a poem that provides a clear description of the painting in order to harmonize the two worlds. The dichotomy between the two worlds and the earthly combined with the spiritual is a returning feature in the works of DGR.

The Passover in the Holy Family

Here meet together the prefiguring day And day prefigured. ‘Eating, thou shalt stand, Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand, With blood-stained door and lintel,’—did God say By Moses' mouth in ages passed away. And now, where this poor household doth comprise At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,— Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.

The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained, What shadow of Death the Boy's fair brow subdues Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained

By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes (fig. 5) He deemed himself not worthy to unloose; And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.

The second double work I will discuss of the second phase is The Passover in the Holy Family as it follows the line of the previous double work which incorporated religious themes. The painting is made with watercolours, which was typical for the second phase (Agosta 78).

The first thing that can be seen are (once again) Christian influences in an earthly setting. Kashtan accurately describes the scene of the painting in the following paragraph:

The Holy Family preparing for the Passover holiday: Mary gathers bitter herbs, one of the traditional components of the Seder plate, while Zachary paints the door and lintel of the house with lamb's blood as prescribed by the Book of Exodus. Jesus holds the bowl of lamb's blood as John the Baptist ties Jesus's shoes. All these actions are invested with typological symbolism. For example, the lamb's blood symbolizes the blood that Christ, the Lamb (with capital L), will later shed on the cross, whereas the bitter herbs perhaps echo the bitterness of Christ's sacrifice. (Kashtan, “Textualization and Typology in The Passover in the Holy Family”).

According to Kashtan, “Rossetti does not simply present these images and allow the viewer to decipher their symbolic meaning. Rather, he accompanies the watercolor with a poem of the same title in which he explicates each of the symbols” (Kashtan, “Textualization and Typology in The Passover in the Holy Family”).

The poem, which provides an explanation for the symbols, is comparable to Sonnet II accompanying The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1). In order to understand why this work forms an important bridge, I will quote McGann’s observations:

The Passover in the Holy Family is a work that functions as acts of artistic homage and thence as arguments for a devotional art determined to function sacramentally. Because pagan eroticism formed a crucial element in his devotional beliefs, however, a work like this, lacking a strong erotic element, does not fully express what he wants his art to execute. The picture is therefore largely intellectual and programmatic, like The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. (“The Passover in the Holy Family: Gathering Bitter Herbs.” Rossettiarchive.org)

Although The Passover in the Holy Family (fig. 5) and The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1) can be compared to a certain extent, they are not entirely identical. Whereas, for The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1), DGR provided two sonnets (which allowed the reader/viewer to engage in a conversation with the two sister arts causing the sonnets and the painting to be intertwined), The Passover in the Holy Family (fig. 5) is only accompanied by one sonnet (merely describing the symbols of the painting which therefore limits the viewer’s own interpretation of the painting and therefore the potential for a dialogue with and between the sister arts). The reason for this strong use of symbols is rooted in DGR’s fascination for typological symbolism (Landow, “Life Touching Lips" 250). According to Landow, it is this use of typology that allowed DGR to combine the sister arts (“Life touching Lips” 265). For DGR, typology “offered an example of the way human imagination could organize written discourse to show time had meaning” (Landow, “Life Touching Lips” 254).

The opening line of the sonnet starts with the sentence “Here meet together the prefiguring day” (line 1) focussing on the word "prefiguring” that is repeated in line 2: “And day prefigured.” Landow asserts “that typology – or figuralism ... provides repeated examples of situations in which the eternal brushes up against or reaches into human time” (“Life Touching Lips” 249). The example above completely covers this statement. By using this word, DGR is stating the obvious as he uses the word “hint” in the poem in which everything is a hint for the painting. It is literally a “hint for a hint.” Similarly to sonnet II for The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (fig. 1) and Ecce Ancilla Domini! (fig. 2), in which DGR opens his sonnet with “These are the symbols” (line 1), and in line 8 he writes “Is Innocence, being interpreted.”

Landow argues that DGR “was attracted by typology’s … effect [of connecting] … two times, the second of which completes or ‘fulfills’ the first” (“Life Touching Lips” 248). According to Landow, DGR “was intrigued by the fact that prefigurative symbolism provides a means of redeeming human time, of perceiving an order and causality in human events” (“Life Touching Lips” 248). This argument is indeed valid for “Mary’s Girlhood,” “Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon Pharisee,”

and to “The Passover in the Holy Family” as these three sonnets depict DGR’s obsession with time: “Till” / “dawn”. As the sonnets are Petrarchan, the first octave of the sonnet provides “a hint” for the second part. Therefore, the second part “fulfils” the first. This is also depicted in his paintings as hints are put in the painting so the viewer can predict what is going to happen. In The Passover in the Holy Family, not only the Passover but also a whole series of events of the Exodus are commemorated (Landow, “Life Touching Lips” 249) as the poet refers to “Moses” in line 4. In line 8 “the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay,” DGR is referring to the Old Law and the New Law and shifts after line 8 from the present to the future (Landow 249). The present is depicted in line 6 by the word “now.” This shift is also noticeable in “Mary’s Girlhood” in which the reader shifts between two time frames: the first part of the sonnet in which Mary is waiting patiently, and the second part of poem, the Annunciation. What is also similar between these double works, such as in The Passover in the Holy Family (fig. 5), is the depiction of Mary in the painting as being sad. In The Passover in the Holy Family (fig. 5), Mary is collecting herbs: “And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained” (line 14), in which this Passover ritual is used to symbolize on the one hand, “the past sufferings of the Jews,” and on the other hand, “the coming agony of Mary and her Son” (Landow, “Life Touching Lips” 250).

In relation to ekphrasis, the poem “The Passover in the Holy Family,” is a pure description of what is shown in the painting. In my opinion, the poem does not provide a symbolical or historical context, only the title does. Therefore, the reader/viewer reads what he or she is supposed to look at in the painting. The reader does not get a deeper meaning of the underlying story. Consequently, one would have to understand the meaning of all the biblical symbols to be able to understand the story. The painting can exist on its own, as what you see is literally what you get, but the poem cannot as the poem has no meaning without its painting. This concludes that the two sister arts cannot be separated and can only create meaning to one another when they are combined in a double work.

Bocca Baciata

Given the length of the poem, I have chosen not to include it here. Please see the Appendix to this dissertation for the complete poem.

(Fig. 6)

The next double work I will discuss is the painting Bocca Baciata (fig. 6) and its accompanying poem “The Song of the Bower.” The poem was composed shortly after the painting was made (McGann, “Bocca Baciata, Alternately titled: The Song of the Bower.” Rossettiarchive.org). I chose to discuss this double work because, as indicated by Agosta, this work marks a shift between the artistic development of DGR between phase two and phase three in relation to subject matter and medium (83). McGann argues that “from about 1860 Rossetti began to explore how this embodied condition of soul functions as the engine of the spirit’s life and development” (The Game 118). The poem’s subject matter is about “the marriage of the sacred and profane” that after 1859 became a crucial characteristic in the works of DGR (McGann, “Bocca Baciata, Alternately titled: The Song of the Bower.” Rossettiarchive.org).

Bocca Baciata deviates from the “stilted Pre-Raphaelite realism” of the first phase and the medieval watercolour figures represented in the second phase (Agosta 83). I agree with Agosta that this double work is much different from the first two phases. The viewer’s attention is immediately drawn to the close-up of the woman’s face as she is represented with lush red lips. The woman is revealing a lot of flesh due to her bare neck and part of her skin that is showing from under her coat. She looks sensual and mysterious as she has this dreamy twinkle in her eye. Her figure almost takes up the whole canvas which makes her rather grotesque. The colours in the painting are deep, and therefore not comparable to the watercolours used for The Passover in the Holy Family (fig. 5) for instance. The figure in Bocca Baciata (fig. 6) is different from the Medieval realistic figures depicted in DGR’s earlier works or, in particular, in the drawing of Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (fig. 4). Bocca Baciata (fig. 6) has a “physical directness” that is not seen in the earlier works of DGR (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 14).

The influence of Blake is present in this work as McGann argues that this work is not a representation of something real but of something that is imagined: “‘an experience of imaginative desire’ in which the figures are called by Blake ‘emanations’” (The Game 19). The robust figure and rich colours in Bocca Baciata (fig. 6) demonstrate that DGR was also influenced by the Venetian painters Titian and Giorgione (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 14). Equal to Prettejohn’s findings, McGann claims that this ornamental work is an example of DGR’s knowledge of Venetian art (The Game 19-20). In relation to the concept of ekphrasis, DGR “attached a slip of paper on the back of the painting that refers to the last sentence in Boccaccio's Decameron, Day 2, Story 7” (McGann, “Bocca Baciata.” Rossettiarchive.org). The translation for Bocca Baciata is “a kissed mouth loses none of its freshness; it rather renews itself, like the moon” (McGann, “Bocca Baciata.” Rossettiarchive.org). The word “renewing” can be interpreted and linked to DGR’s artistic practice as he “renews” his work by adopting a different style depicted in this particular work and in the works of the third phase of his career. The title “a kissed mouth” links both the poem and painting as the reader/viewer’s attention is drawn to the red lips depicted in the double work.

Agosta adds that this new artistic development, that will inaugurate the third phase, was a “final alignment of hand and soul” (83). I agree with Agosta as DGR succeeded in his later work to combine the two sister arts perfectly. Prettejohn also sees this phase as the unity of body and soul, the earth and the spiritual represented by the medium of a woman, portrayed by Jane Burden/Morris [who became the model for DGR’s paintings of his third phase] (Rossetti and his Circle 9-10). In the third phase, DGR’s unity between the sonnet and the painting is stronger than before. In order to fully understand the double work as a whole, the poem and painting cannot be seen or read separately. McGann argues that “because this work makes such a radical shift toward the ‘profane’ and ‘fleshly’ dimension of the lost beloved, the implication arises that what the lover has been ‘missing’ is in fact a mortal beloved, rather than some transcendental and spiritualized mistress” (“Bocca Baciata, Alternately titled: The Song of the Bower.” Rossettiarchive.org).

As Bocca Baciata is about the dichotomy between heaven and earth, the loss of love, and “the consequences of that lost love”, Jane Cooper compares Bocca Baciata to The Blessed Damozel (56).

Cooper asserts that the poem “The Song of the Bower” is “one man’s lament as he recalls a past love” (56). In “The Song of the Bower,” the lament is depicted throughout the whole poem. Examples are found in line 2 “Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?” and in line 36 “Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’.”

Oh! the last time, and the hundred before: Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember, Yet something that sighs from him passes the door. (lines 1-8)

Cooper notices that the poem starts with a stanza that suggests “what is to come” (56). “The speaker remarks that the ‘Free Love’ (5) of the past has yielded to the ‘Fettered Love’ (7) of the present” (Cooper 56). In the past Love ‘leaped’ (5), but in the present it lies ‘motionless’ (7). (Cooper 56). The use of time and space, present in this poem, is also a returning characteristic in the work of DGR. In relation to the title of the poem, Cooper notices “the strongly rhythmic dactylic tetrameter lines ironically impose a musicality that opposes the mood of the speaker” (56). This mood of melancholy is reflected in the painting in which the viewer can see the woman gazing and meditating. The speaker keeps recalling a time that is no more: “Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day” (line 22) / “My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away” (line 24). In line 24 the word “mouth” hints at the title of the double work and the painting as the red lips of the woman are accentuated. In line 21, “(the sun's kiss is colder!)” is another allusion to the title of the work and the painting. As this double work is called the first “fleshly” one (McGann, The Game 6), it is interesting to find out how this aspect returns in both the painting and the poem. The fleshly neck, arms, mouth, and chest the viewer can see in the painting are described in stanza 3 of the poem:

Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower, Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn...... My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away. (lines 19-24)

Due to erotic symbols in the painting as the apple and the allusion to a slightly covered breast, this double works seems to be quite erotic, however, the description in the poem is rather sensual. Therefore, the poem helps to make the double work sensual instead of sexual.

Another aspect that is depicted in the double work is the aspect of isolation. This is portrayed in the poem as the woman is sitting in a chamber: “Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber” (line 5). In the painting, the viewer sees a woman meditating who is surrounded by nature. The references to nature are mentioned in the poem: “shower-beaten flower” (line 11) / “The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell” (line 30). Lines 11 and 30 predict that something bad is yet to come. In this case the future only brings sorrow. Cooper’s insights helped me see “that the painting’s subject has probably paused while walking in a walled garden, her abstracted gaze, as if into a mirror, and the ‘wall’ of marigolds behind her—resembling nothing so much as wallpaper— project a feeling of intimacy” (58).

As Bocca Baciata is compared to The Blessed Damozel, Cooper asserts another similarity between the two double works: the use of flowers. In The Blessed Damozel (fig. 3) the woman carries white lilies and in Bocca Baciata (fig. 6) the woman has a white rose in her hair. The similarity is that both

flowers stand for innocence, however, the marigold carried in the woman’s hand and in the background in Bocca Baciata (fig. 6), show that these works are also different. Cooper claims that “[as the damozel is] surrounded by roses, she is another heavenly bloom, unlike the physically alluring woman in Bocca Baciata who, in commanding the viewer’s attention, reduces the marigolds [associated with the Virgin] behind her to background decoration. (59)

By comparing Bocca Baciata with The Blessed Damozel, or any other double work of the previous phases it becomes clear that this double work marks a shift between two phases and introduces a new one: phase three.

4.3. Phase Three (1863-1882)

According to Agosta “Rossetti's third and final phase ... was Rossetti's longest sustained, from 1863 until his death in 1882, and contains his most recognizable paintings, those large oils of women with thoughtful eyes, columnar necks, and dark, massed hair” (78). Doughty claims that “from watercolour he [DGR] now turned with increasing skill to oils, and, from his former Dantesque and Arthurian subjects, to portraits of beautiful feminine models, often representing mythological or fanciful conceptions” (10).

In this part, I will elaborate on the later works of DGR. The double work Bocca Baciata I have discussed in the previous phase is an example of the link between the second phase and the third phase as it was the first painting with a fleshly and physical form (Agosta 83). Further, Bocca Baciata (fig. 6) was an oil-painting like the other works I will discuss from DGR’s third phase.

All the DGR women portrayed in the third phase have this physical dimension. Whereas the earlier works I discussed were mainly based on religious themes and the dichotomy between heaven and earth, the later works get a more specific meaning: the dichotomy between heavenly purity and earthly desire. Further, the subject of the woman becomes the medium. Agosta borrows the words of Pater who says that “DGR’s brand of natural supernaturalism involved that medieval dissolution of the accepted boundaries distinguishing body from soul, lover from beloved, creator from creation – an effect necessarily difficult to achieve in a more secular era” (qtd. in Agosta 79). I could not agree more with the words of Pater as these dichotomies are clearly visible in the later works I will discuss. The woman gets the primordial role in his paintings and is portrayed as the virgin or the whore (or both), making the body and soul intertwined. DGR makes oil-paintings of women with “thoughtful eyes, columnar necks and dark massed hair” (Agosta 78). This “dark massed hair” is for instance visible in the double works Pandora, Astarte Syriaca and Proserpine.

In the double works of the later phase, DGR connects poetry and painting by sometimes literally attaching the complete, or a part of the sonnet to the painting. The sonnet provides a symbolic context preventing the viewer from not merely seeing a pure sensual figure in the painting. The painter-poet’s embodiment of his thoughts is visualised in these later works in which he combines “Natural Supernaturalism” and “nonmimetic artistic practice” creating an “instantaneous penetrating sense” (Agosta 79). The double works that embody this penetrating sense are Venus Verticordia, Pandora, Astarte Syriaca and Proserpine as the women in these works are depicted as fixed, impregnated by a psychologically mood staring in front of them or right at you. They seem to be possessed and by looking at them the viewer feels like a voyeur penetrating their soul.

The women in DGR’s paintings look almost unreal and mystical, as if they were an imaginary vision of a woman rather than a reflection of what he literally saw. Agosta argues that it is “Rossetti's intention to create women ‘unlike anything in nature’ who are ‘distortions’ and ‘grotesque exaggerations’, ‘conscious and purposive’” (83).

The double works have a different intention than the earlier ones, as Stein notices that the sonnets written for the pictures of the third phase are, not to “control” the reader/viewer as it was for the earlier double works, but an “attempt instead to evoke the mysterious powers of their central characters, to lure the viewer under their ‘spell’” (qtd. in Agosta 85). This interpretation of Stein (that women want to put the viewer under a spell) is similar to Agosta’s findings who refers to the “Rossetti cult” (85). Therefore, both critics emphasize the relationship between the woman in the painting and its viewer (the man looking at her). In the double works of DGR, a balance of power between men and women is depicted as the women have power because of their erotic physical attraction on men which withstands whenever a man keeps looking at them (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 26). Therefore, the painter-poet who created this woman is “enslaved by the woman’s beauty” (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 26). Prettejohn also covers Swinburne’s findings who says that the women in DGR’s work stand for “the dichotomy between the spiritual and physical in art”(qtd. in Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 31). Consequently, women are a metaphor for “the dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical in art” (Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle 31). As I chose to interpret the works of DGR through the concept of ekphrasis, I agree with Swinburne’s ideas to see the women in the double works as metaphors for the separation of the body and the soul in art. In the next four close readings I will analyse this relationship between poem and painting, and the meaning of “body and soul” in the double works of DGR of the third phase.

Venus Verticordia

She hath the apple in her hand for thee, Yet almost in her heart would hold it back; She muses, with her eyes upon the track Of that which in thy spirit they can see. Haply, ‘Behold, he is at peace,’ saith she; ‘Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,— The wandering of his feet perpetually!’

A little space her glance is still and coy; But if she give the fruit that works her spell, Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy. Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell, And her far seas moan as a single shell, And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy. (fig. 7)

I chose to analyse Venus Verticordia as it immediately struck my attention for its beauty, and because it appears to be considered one of DGR’s most ambiguous works (McGann, The Game 120- 121). As Venus Verticordia (fig. 7) is the only nude that DGR painted (Agosta 93), it is the most “fleshliest” one out of his paintings.

In terms of ekphrasis, the poem and painting are inseparable as the soul needs a body and the body needs a soul to convey the message which, in this double work, is a message of love. By providing Venus with a sonnet, DGR, on the one hand, gives the reader/viewer a look into her mind, and on the other hand, he gives her a voice. By putting the sonnet and the painting together, Agosta claims that DGR’s works become “living creatures in whom body and soul are indivisible” (86). This statement reinforces my claim that visual art and poetry are inseparable in the work of DGR as the subject in the painting gets a soul as a result of the accompanying poem.

The work is considered ambiguous as the original meaning behind the subject Venus Verticordia has changed (McGann, The Game 120-121). Although Venus is portrayed in a Christian setting (as she has a halo above her), the eroticism is represented in the picture as “[Venus] is surrounded by roses and honeysuckle, Rossetti’s emblems for sexual passion” (Agosta 93). The ambiguity lies in the way that the sensual Venus is staged like the Virgin Mary. Physicality and spirituality are put in the same frame whereas the butterflies (emblems of the soul) reconcile body and soul (Agosta 93). Consequently, in this work the butterflies can be seen as “bridge figures” between the spiritual and the physical. The flowers in the picture are “culled from a place unknown alike to corporeal eye and rational mind – a place Rossetti called the ‘bower of unimagined flowers and tree’” (McGann, The

Game 120). McGann’s argument demonstrates that DGR was creating a work of art derived from his own imagination.

According to McGann, the contradictions in the painting are translated in the poem (The Game 121). The ambiguity starts with the title, Venus Verticordia, in which “Verticordia signified a Venus who ‘could turn the hearts of women to cultivate chastity’” (The Game 121). The “real” and not the “imaginative” Venus Verticordia would “help” other women to be chaste by turning their hearts away from illicit love. (McGann, “Venus Verticordia.” Rossettiarchive.org). But in DGR’s double work, Venus Verticordia does the opposite: she turns “hearts towards the indulgence of the senses” instead of away (McGann, “Venus Verticordia.” Rossettiarchive.org).

This ambiguous world between earth and heaven often comes back in the double works of DGR. This “heaven,” imagined by DGR (McGann, The Game 121), is described in the first line of the poem: “She hath the apple in her hand for thee” (line 1). DGR is “referring to the apple of discord, the apple that Eve offered to Adam” (McGann, The Game 122). The apple is “the emblem of pleasure and beauty ... an emblem of secret, perhaps still forbidden, knowledge” (McGann, The Game 122). The ambiguity lies in the fact that the reader/viewer cannot know exactly what DGR was trying to convey with the apple as it has two meanings. McGann claims that “Rossetti insisted the argument for the relationship between beauty and knowledge [to] be executed in an aesthetic form and medium as [he did in Venus Verticordia]” (The Game 122). Whereas beauty is found in the physical beauty of Venus, knowledge is found in the emblem of the apple. McGann argues that the “Venus is a figura of Art ... she has been raised up through an imaginative action” (The Game 122-123). The meaning of the text and picture is “to carry us to a knowledge, a realm of Idea, that escapes the limits of the mind’s conceptual and thematic forms” (The Game 123). This statement shows us that DGR’s work in this phase is not mimesis, by copying nature, but a creation of his imagination. Agosta claims that DGR makes a complete “shift away from the Pre-Raphaelite mimetic truism” (80). As I stated that one’s mind is able to form its own visual conception of a poem, I will take McGann’s insights into my research that the idea behind DGR’s double works escape the limits of what is seen (The Game 121): true meaning is not only what the reader/viewer sees but also what his or her mind creates. The works I discussed from DGR’s first and second phase differ notably from the works of the third phase. The earlier works were Christian educational depictions and women were not directly looking at the viewer. McGann argues that “Venus Verticordia plays its classicism off against its more recessive biblical elements within an ethnomythological context” (The Game 124).

When the second stanza of the poem is read, one understands that the speaker refers to history as he mentions “Phrygian boy” (line 11) and the Trojan war, “Troy” (line 14). Here is seems that DGR is sharing his cultural knowledge with the reader in order to distract the attention from the nudity in the picture (which was highly disapproved in the Victorian context). The historical context also demonstrates that DGR is “historicizing” his work. Gryll’s claims that “for Gabriel the real world was

not at school nor in the London streets, but far away in the past with the Greeks of the Trojan War and the knights of the Middle Ages”(17). In the stanza, from line 11 to 14, the picture and the sonnet do not seem to be doubled as they seem to be different in content.

This double work consists of a sonnet that gently hints at the painting. Without the sonnet one could think that the painting is just a portrait of a sensual woman, nothing more. Because of the sonnet, this painting gets a historical background and the apple gets a complete different meaning: the meaning of knowledge. Therefore, this double work is an important example of ekphrasis as the painting needs the description to get the message of knowledge conveyed. Venus Verticordia is a good example of DGR trying to unify his painting and sonnet, or better, to unite body and soul, so the picture as a whole would come alive.

Pandora

What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine, The deed that set these fiery pinions free? Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory In its own likeness make thee half divine? Was it that Juno's brow might stand a sign For ever? and the mien of Pallas be A deadly thing? and that all men might see In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?

What of the end? These beat their wings at will, The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,— Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited. Aye, clench the casket now! Whither they go Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know (fig. 8) If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

I chose to analyse this poem as it is closely connected to the previous poem “Venus Verticordia” for its ambiguity and its implicit references to disaster. It is also similar to the other double works I will discuss (Astarte Syriaca and Proserpine) in which the women dominate the canvas and the subject matter is about powerful women. McGann asserts that “Pandora is an allusion to the Judgment of Paris and [that] Rossetti is suggesting that the all-gifted Pandora incarnates within herself the virtues and powers of Juno, Pallas Athene, and Venus” (McGann, DGR Collected Poetry and Prose 394).

The recurrent subject of Venus is also present in this work. Similar to Venus Verticordia, the poem reveals a lot of meaning about the painting. The poem is a description of the painting although the two sister arts do not harmonize completely in this double work.

In the first stanza of the poem the speaker addresses Pandora with many questions: “What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine” (line 1) / “The deed that set these fiery pinions free?” (line 2) / “What of the end? These beat their wings at will” (line 9). The speaker is questioning Pandora’s deeds and divinity: “Ah! Wherefore did the Olympian consistory In its own likeness make thee half divine?” (line 3-4) and revealing the double side of Pandora: she is earthly and spiritual. Pandora is an ambiguous figure and the speaker is wondering what made her half divine: “A deadly thing? And that all men might see / In Venus’s eyes the gaze of Proserpine?” (lines 7-8). All these questions seem as Pandora is being attacked by the speaker. This stanza is a good example of Prettejohn’s findings in which she argues that DGR’s works have a balance of power between a man and a woman (Rossetti and his Circle 26). In the stanza the speaker refers to three gods: Athena (goddess of wisdom, war and crafts), Juno (the goddess of love and marriage) and Venus (the goddess of love, sex, beauty, and fertility). According to the speaker, Pandora embodies these three goddesses.

Consequently, she is a goddess of knowledge, love, and sexuality. The intention of DGR to combine knowledge and beauty is represented in one woman: Pandora. This kind of woman is highly powerful and intimidating as she has the three features that were not appreciated in Victorian women. Hence, the powers and character traits that Pandora has, are represented as negative.

This is translated in the painting as Pandora is surrounded by an evil red smoke. This metaphor of a beautiful woman representing something negative, because she has talents that were not welcomed for a woman, can be interpreted as the artistic practice of DGR according to which he combined beauty with knowledge. DGR’s argument for knowledge and love is depicted in: “Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know” (line 13). I recall Prettejohn’s statement, mentioned earlier, that DGR questioned the role of Victorian women as they were assumed not to think or know a lot (Rossetti and his Circle 27).

In the next stanza the speaker repeats line 1 (“What of the end”) in line 9. In line 10, the speaker, refers to “The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill” which represents the dangerous Pandora who has the power to change things into the forbidden; “Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited” (line 11).

In relation to ekphrasis, the crucial link between the painting and the poem is made through the sentence “Aye, clench the casket now! Whither they go” (line 12). Whereas the casket is the most important word in the poem, the hands are the most important part for the painting. Combining both poem and painting, the hands and the box become the focus of the double work, or better, the “bridge figures.” McGann argues that “the importance DGR attached to the hands is underscored in the accompanying sonnet, where the hands appear at a signal moment in the text (line 12)” (“Pandora.” Rossettiarchive.org). In the painting this casket is presented by Pandora holding on to a box as she is worried to release the spirits inside the box. The spirits stand for hope, so this can be interpreted as: “she is holding on to hope”. In the poem this is visible in line 14: “If Hope still pent there be alive or dead”. Although the box unifies the poem and the painting to a certain extent, in the poem, the smoke of the box is described as the only hope Pandora has left, whereas the smoke in the painting is shown as something hopeless, negative. The red smoke in the painting depicts the evil spirits released on earth. “The smoke-involved, barely visible ‘winged and fleshless passions’ ...; the lost gaze of Pandora; the closed casket, which may or may not still contain the hope signified in the myth (a hope that itself might or might not prove less fleeting or more substantial” (McGann, “Pandora.” Rossettiarchive.org).

McGann asserts that “the accompanying sonnet treats these ambiguities in an explicit way, but the painting is no less clear in its representations” (“Pandora.” Rossettiarchive.org). I agree with McGann that this makes the work ambiguous as the painting and the poem do not double each other perfectly as in DGR’s other double works. Another imbalance between the poem and the

painting, according to McGann, is visible in the gaze of Pandora. McGann affirms that Pandora’s melancholic stare in the painting seems not to be in relation with the poem’s strong accusation of Pandora (“Pandora.” Rossettiarchive.org). One would expect to see a more tormented figure filled with guilt, as she is “releasing” the evil spirits from her box, rather than this serene, melancholic one which can be seen in the painting (McGann, “Pandora.” Rossettiarchive.org). I do not completely agree with McGann who asserts that Pandora has a “melancholic stare.” In my opinion, Pandora has an evil stare which makes her the “evil figure” for releasing the evil spirits. Therefore, she does not feel guilty or melancholic.

What is also striking in the painting in comparison to the sonnet, is the lack of detail in the painting. This is remarkable since it is known that detail was something DGR put a lot of emphasis on in his paintings. Besides the detail of the “gaze” (line 8) and the “casket” (line 12), which are described in the poem, no other details are portrayed. It is a rather a “sober” painting, despite its red colour, compared to other paintings of DGR. For instance, in the other double works I have discussed, the paintings were full of symbolic typology. Although in the painting of Pandora (fig. 8), the detail of the neck and the dark voluminous hair are noticeable, this is not visualized in the poem. In the poem, the speaker refers to the three goddesses: Athena, Juno, and Venus. Not one of these goddesses are hinted at in the painting. It is only by reading the poem that one can deduct that Pandora possesses the traits of these goddesses.

Connected to the concept of ekphrasis, the description in the poem is necessary for the painting to come “alive.” The description of the poem gives a soul to Pandora in the painting. Without the accompanying poem providing context, Pandora would be a woman with a casket in her hands surrounded by a strange red smoke staring in front of her. As a result, the strong characteristics this woman possesses would sadly vanish just like the smoke depicted in the painting. Whereas one could find in DGR’s other double works a harmony between the written word and what is portrayed, this is much more difficult for Pandora. However, although the poem is not a pure description of the painting, and the viewer cannot identify all symbols in the poem represented in the painting, the poem does serve its purpose to provide Pandora with the soul of a powerful woman and to convey the message that Pandora is accused for her actions. Yet, the poem also gives Pandora a chance, as she is described as the keeper of the only hope in the world (which is not detectable in the painting). In brief, although the two sister arts do not completely unite with each other, in terms of ekphrasis, the poem is crucial to understand Pandora as a whole.

Astarte Syriaca

Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune: And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune.

Torch-bearing her sweet ministers compel All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea The witness of Beauty's face to be:

That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell (fig. 9) Amulet, talisman, and oracle,— Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.

The following work, Astarte Syriaca, with its dark and mysterious tone, immediately caught my attention for its intriguing portrait of a woman. The poem doubles this as it starts with “Mystery: lo! Betwixt the sun and moon” (line 1) which is perfectly visualised in the picture. Whereas the moon represents darkness, the sun depicts light, shown in the background of the painting.

In the next line, Astarte Syriaca is explained to be “Venus Queen” (line 2). Again, Venus, a recurrent subject in DGR’s paintings and poetry, is portrayed here. This time Venus is portrayed as an early Aphrodite in a silver light: “Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen” (line 3). The image of this “silver sheen” in the sonnet is hinted at in the painting. Similar to The Blessed Damozel (fig. 3), the woman is wearing a girdle. This time, however, it is not unclasped but it “clasps the infinite boon” (line 4) / “Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune” (line 5). Here the girdle should be considered as a means (a “bridge”) holding heaven and earth together. In this double work the unification of heaven and earth creates bliss. As Astarte is wearing the girdle she symbolizes the harmony between the physical and the spiritual.

In the next line (“And from her neck’s inclining flower-stem lean” (line 6)), the reader is forced to look at the picture from the bottom to the top as the speaker started with pointing out the girdle and is now going up to the throat of the woman. Catherine Golden points out that DGR put the sestet, attached to the “lower left-hand portion of the frame,” on that particular place so the reader/viewer would be encouraged “to pause and look upon Astarte” who is directly gazing at the viewer (397). The word “that” in line 12 is also used to lead the reader/viewer and to connect the sonnet to the painting (Golden 397,399). The sonnet therefore is used also used as a “bridge.” The next line visualises the lips and eyes: “Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean” (line 7), the

lips in the painting are filled with desire and the eyes have something pure. The dichotomy between desire and purity is once again juxtaposed. “The pulse of hearts to the spheres dominant tune” (line 8) refers to the heart beating to a harmonious atmosphere.

In the next stanza the speaker turns the attention to the women servants (behind Venus) holding a torch: “Torch-bearing her sweet ministers compel” (line 9). The women in the painting remind me of the angels guarding the bar in The Blessed Damozel (fig. 3). In the next line the speaker refers to Christianity as the seat of God is described as the person who is a witness looking down from heaven over beauty “All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea” (line 10), “The witness of Beauty’s face to be:” (line 11) / “That face, of Love’s all-penetrative spell” (line 12). The beauty of the face is under a spell, which is perfectly visualised in the portrait of Venus in the magical atmosphere of the picture. This reminds me of Agosta’s reference to “spirit incarnations” and the “Rosetti cult” (85). It is also linked to Stein’s argument who claims that the sonnets that accompany the paintings of the DGR’s later phase are “[an] attempt instead to evoke the mysterious powers of their central characters, to lure the viewer under their ‘spell’” (qtd. in Agosta 85). It also covers Prettejohn’s claim who says that the poet is “enslaved by the woman’s beauty” (Rossetti and his Circle 26). God is in the background, where there is light, looking upon the dark earthly woman. In the next line the words “Amulet, talisman, and oracle,— ” (line 13), emphasize this magical sphere. By using synonyms in line 13, DGR is creating rhythm and “temporality [that deludes] the reader/viewer” (Golden 397). According to Golden, “Rossetti slows the meter of the line through elaborate vocabulary and polysyllabic words” (397). By slowing down the meter, DGR creates a pause that moves the reader/viewer to Astarte’s face (Golden 397). Consequently, the sonnet instructs the reader/viewer to look at the painting. The last line emphasizes the woman being in between two worlds: the earthly, dark world under a spell, and a bright heaven: “Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery” (line 14).

In this sonnet and painting, the division between earth and heaven is visualised through light and darkness. The woman is in a state of mystery, where the two worlds fade into each other. The double work possesses a spiritual and mythological underworld where beauty and knowledge play the central role. The relation between beauty and knowledge reminds us of the earlier discussed work, Venus Verticordia. McGann asserts that DGR’s “dream of Intelligence in Love was perhaps most completely realized in the astonishing Astarte Syriaca, a dream of knowledge that would be open, shameless, and – consequently – forbidden” (The Game 157). According to Holmes “Rossetti’s ‘love’ stands for the relations of sexuality and gender” (3). This forbidden beauty/love is emphasized through the picture of Astarte Syriaca, who is pictured with bright red lips, a silver girdle accentuating her feminine curves, and a gown revealing fleshly parts of her body. The “fleshliness” of the figure makes the figure look erotic. According to Golden, the sonnet, which is not erotic, “saves the picture of erotica by immediately informing us that the woman is the goddess of fertility,

sexual love, and the moon” (396). Therefore, the second line “Venus Queen” and the third line “Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen” of the sonnet are crucial to re-define Astarte’s image of “the seductive, cruel Syrian goddess that lures those who behold her to their destruction” (Golden 396). The knowledge that the octave provides is crucial for the figure of Astarte as it puts her in a complete different perspective. Since DGR only attached the sestet to the painting, the complete “reading” of the painting gets disrupted. According to Golden, DGR “sacrifices the unity of the sonnet and its integrity as a distinct work of art” (396). I agree with this statement as the as the sonnet needs to be read as a whole in order to understand the context of the painting. Golden informs us that the octave and sestet both have their separate share concerning the painting and claims that the octave can stand independently as it is providing a mythological context, whereas the sestet, attached to the painting, cannot as it is a visualisation of the painting that cannot exist without it (397-398). Whereas the octave represents the “knowledge,” the sestet and its accompanying painting represent the “beauty” of the double work. In order to reconcile beauty and knowledge, physicality and spirituality, the work should be read and viewed as a whole. Consequently, the painting is in need of the poem and the poem is in need of the painting.

Proserpine

Afar away the light that brings cold cheer Unto this wall,—one instant and no more Admitted at my distant palace-door. Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here. Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey That chills me: and afar, how far away, The nights that shall be from the days that were.

Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign: And still some heart unto some soul doth pine, (Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring, Continually together murmuring,)— (fig. 10) “Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!”

For Proserpine, DGR also wrote an accompanying sonnet making this a double work. The sonnet was, contrary to Astarte Syriaca, completely attached to the painting. Yet both works have a similarity: “the partial sonnet attached to the frame of Astarte Syriaca and the full sonnet attached to the canvas of Proserpine reveal the symbolism behind their feminine subjects” (Golden 396). In Proserpine, DGR deliberately puts the sonnet on the canvas instead of on the frame because he wanted to be sure that the poem and painting would stay together to ensure that no other interpretation than the one he leads his reader/viewer to would occur (as DGR also knew that dealers often reframed his paintings) (Golden 399). This information shows us how important ekphrasis was to DGR and how concerned he was for his works to be misunderstood. One could see the painter-poet as a controlling figure who wanted his double works never to be interpreted in a different way.

The symbolism is detectable in Proserpine (fig. 10) as the picture bathes in a dark mysterious atmosphere. This is conveyed in the poem: “Afar away the light that brings cold cheer”(line 1) / “Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear” (line 4) / “That chills me: and afar, how far away” (line 7). The absent light and coldness cause a gloomy atmosphere, which is sensible in the picture. The use of demonstrative pronouns “this” and “that”, similar to the demonstrative pronouns used in “Astarte Syriaca,” are used to direct the reader/viewer’s attention to the picture. They exist as a bridge to connect the poem to the painting. By using the demonstrative pronouns, a pause is created which helps to shift the focus of the reader from the poem to the painting. The lines “Unto this wall, – one instant and no more” (line 2) / “Admitted at my distant palace-door” (line 3) refer to a distance as the door is far away and does not accept anyone to go in anymore. This distance, the movement

which I discussed in other double works of DGR, is even more detectable in this sonnet. Distance, or better, “space and time” is created by the word “Afar” that is repeatedly used in line 1, 4, 6, and 7.

The words “distant” (line 3) / “how far away” (line 7) / “The nights that shall be from the days that were” (line 8) all refer to a distant memory that the speaker wants to emphasize. Agosta argues that “the distance in time and space separating our real from her realm of shadows” is indicated by the word ‘afar’” (88). Further, Agosta asserts that the poem accompanying Proserpine (fig. 10) is a “sonnet-soliloquy” (88). By using a sonnet-soliloquy, the reader/viewer is pulled into the subject’s mysterious state of mind. As the sonnet is a self-reflective speech about her mental state (Agosta 89), the reader/viewer gets the feeling of being in Proserpine’s mind.

In line 5 the speaker refers to the forbidden fruit: “dire fruit, which tasted once, must thrall me here.” The Christian reference here is comparable to the apple that DGR refers to in his double work Venus Verticordia in which forbidden fruit is beauty and represents forbidden love. As the speaker is saying that the awful fruit “must thrall me here” (line 5) it means that he is a slave of this fruit, of what is forbidden. Enslaved by the beauty of the woman, associated with Proserpine, as she is the one holding the fruit which becomes clearer in the picture. Proserpine “binds herself to Pluto the underworld when she tastes the fruit she finds there” (Golden 399). In the painting the piece of fruit, [a pomegranate] is positioned in a strategic place, between Proserpine’s eyes and lips, so the viewer’s attention is directed towards the important meaning of this fruit. It becomes a “focal point” (Golden 400).

As “thrall” also indicates a space of time, the ambiguous word has two meanings: as a slave of something forbidden and a space of time that is indicated. In “Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey” (line 6) the speaker mentions the Tartars, an Ancient tribe. The setting and the forbidden fruit are described as the inferno. As this word “Tartarean” means “Of or belonging to the Tartarus of the ancients; hence, pertaining to hell or to purgatory; infernal” (“Tartarean”), DGR is, similar to Astarte Syriaca, showing his knowledge of ancient history. By doing this, the focus of the theme “beauty as the forbidden love” is doubled as the work can also be seen as a representation of ancient history. Golden claims that the sonnet has two purposes: “[to] give a portion of history behind the

principal figure on canvas” (396) and to “focus our attention on the mind, face, and eyes of a figure whose physical and erotic beauty immediately arrests our attention” (396).

In the next line, the gloomy atmosphere and the past are depicted as the speaker mentions “The nights that shall be from the days that were” (line 8), where the discrepancy between light and darkness is visualized. This is a returning aspect in DGR’s double works as night and darkness stand for hell and evil, and light and day for all what is good.

In the next stanza, the speaker says that he is drawn by strange thoughts (“Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign” (line 10)) and that he is listening for a sign. The speaker is looking for a heartbeat to accompany his soul which is full of grief (“And still some heart unto some soul doth pine” (line 11)). The lines between parentheses (“(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring, / Continually together murmuring,)–”) (lines 12-13) are a stylistic device that DGR also used in “The Blessed Damozel” to emphasize the alternation in speaking between the lover and the beloved. Proserpine is saying that she will bring joy when they can be together complaining: “(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring, / Continually together murmuring,)–” (lines 12-13). After this line there is a dash, emphasizing a pause and a moment of contemplation. The stanza ends with a line between quotation marks “‘Woe’s me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!’” and an exclamation mark. This is Proserpine’s inner dialogue (Golden 400), a lament, expressing her passionate grief and unhappiness. Her melancholic state is detectable in the poem and visualised in the painting. “The wintery upper world mourns her loss, then celebrates her brief but yearly return with the foliage of spring” (Golden 399).

This sonnet has a deep intimate atmosphere because the speaker, the lover, is speaking in the first person and directly addressing his beloved Proserpine who is sharing her inner thoughts. Golden claims that the first person in the octave is Proserpine who “recalls the myth” and the sestet the soliloquy of her thoughts that inform the reader/viewer on how to interpret the painting (400). The words between parentheses, Golden affirms, are “Proserpine’s inner speech, the ‘sounds’ (line 10) she hears from inside herself” (400). In respect to this listening, Golden asserts the detail of the revealed ear on the canvas which indicates what the sonnet suggests “Listening” for a “sign” from “Enna” (line 4) which “invites the reader/viewer to personalize the myth” (401). Consequently, the ear forms a detail, or a “focus point,” that connects the painting with the sonnet and the other way around. As the sonnet is attached to the picture, this dialogue becomes alive in the painting itself. A dialogue that requires the reader/viewer to look into the subject’s mind and feel her mourning “and the entire mortal world that also mourns for her ‘soul’ from which it is separated” (Golden 400).

This argument demonstrates the separation between body and soul in the double works of DGR. In relation to “focus points” connecting poems to paintings and vice versa, I would like to refer to Golden who discusses DGR’s “coin metaphor” (395). According to Golden: “the full or partial text that Rossetti inscribed on the canvas or frame allows the reader/viewer to use each ‘coin’ to interpret the less visible side of its counterpart” (395). “The sonnet, readily conveying the meaning and history behind the figures on canvas, directs and organizes the reader/viewer’s response to the mythology of the painting which can only be hinted at on canvas through symbols and meaning- laden details” (Golden 395). Further, Golden argues that “the interaction between inscribed text and painting in his sonnet and painting reveals the double nature of both art forms” (395).

I have decided to discuss both double works Astarte Syriaca and Proserpine at the end of this dissertation because, according to me, they are the best illustrations of how a double work functions. By attaching a piece or the whole sonnet to the picture, DGR leads and directs the reader/viewer to read and view his work in a certain way. As I discussed earlier, the painting and the poem cannot stand separable They are intertwined. DGR’s long-life search for the unification of the two dichotomies, body and soul, through the synthesis of poetry and painting is finally fulfilled in this last phase of his artistic career.

To say it in Agosta’s words:

For Rossetti, just as body is indistinguishable from soul, so is the painting bonded with the poem. Together the poem and painting form the unified art object. (98)

Chapter 5: Conclusion

For the past centuries, scholars have made many attempts to analyse the life and work of DGR. I am indebted to these scholars for providing helpful thoughts for my analysis. In combination with my own findings, I have tried to define the double works of DGR.

I have analysed ten different double works, representing the three phases DGR’ artistic career is commonly divided in, each time from two different angles: poetry and visual art.

In this dissertation, I have found out that there are differences but also resemblances between poetry and visual art, both in terms of content and in terms of form. The differences, in particular, between both have the inherent power to create a dynamic dialogue, on the one hand, between the two art forms and, on the other hand, with the viewer/reader, which brings the double work alive. It is not a matter of which work came first (the poem or the painting). Rather, the focus should be on the moment both art forms come together.

After analysing the interrelationship between visual art and poetry in DGR’s double works, I can conclude that, even though they each derive from two completely different domains, they are unities which make them inseparable in order to create (further) meaning. In DGR’s double works, the painting or drawing is in need of the poem and the poem is in need of the painting or drawing. Although each part of a double work is filled with dichotomies, the double work seen as a whole forms a unity.

It remains difficult to provide a univocal answer to the question whether DGR was more of a poet than a painter or vice versa. To me, however, DGR is both a painter and a poet as his double works embody the spirit of an artistic soul.

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Appendix 1 - List of Poems

Mary’s Girlhood (For a Picture)

I. This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect, God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee. Unto God's will she brought devout respect, Profound simplicity of intellect, And supreme patience. From her mother's knee Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity; Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect. So held she through her girlhood; as it were An angel-watered lily, that near God 10 Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home, She woke in her white bed, and had no fear At all, — yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed; Because the fulness of the time was come.

II. These are the symbols. On that cloth of red I' the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each, Except the centre of its points, to teach That Christ is not yet born. The books — whose head Is golden Charity, as Paul hath said — Those virtues are wherein the soul is rich; Therefore on them the lily standeth, which Is innocence, being interpreted. The seven-thorn'd brier and palm seven-leaved Are here great sorrow and her great reward 10 Until the end be full, the Holy One Abides without. She soon shall have achieved Her perfect purity: yea, God the Lord Shall soon vouchsafe His Son to be her Son.

The Blessed Damozel

The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn; 10 Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn.

Herseemed she scarce had been a day One of God's choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers; 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, 20 Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair Fell all about my face. . . . Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves. The whole year sets apace.)

It was the rampart of God's house That she was standing on; By God built over the sheer depth The which is Space begun; So high, that looking downward thence She scarce could see the sun. 30

It lies in Heaven, across the flood Of ether, as a bridge. Beneath, the tides of day and night With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met 'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves

Their heart-remembered names; 40 And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm; Until her bosom must have made The bar she leaned on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm.

From the fixed place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce 50 Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove Within the gulf to pierce Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf; and now She spoke through the still weather.

Her voice was like the voice the stars Had when they sang together. 60

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song, Strove not her accents there, Fain to be hearkened? When those bells Possessed the mid-day air, Strove not her steps to reach my side Down all the echoing stair?)

‘I wish that he were come to me, For he will come,’ she said. ‘Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth, Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd? 70 Are not two prayers a perfect strength? And shall I feel afraid?

‘When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I'll take his hand and go with him To the deep wells of light; As unto a stream we will step down, And bathe there in God's sight.

‘We two will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, 80

Whose lamps are stirred continually With prayer sent up to God; And see our old prayers, granted, melt Each like a little cloud.

‘We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His Name audibly. 90

‘And I myself will teach to him, I myself, lying so, The songs I sing here; which his voice Shall pause in, hushed and slow, And find some knowledge at each pause, Or some new thing to know.’

(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st! Yea, one wast thou with me That once of old. But shall God lift To endless unity 100 The soul whose likeness with thy soul Was but its love for thee?)

‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies, Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys.

‘Circlewise sit they, with bound locks And foreheads garlanded; 110 Into the fine cloth white like flame Weaving the golden thread, To fashion the birth-robes for them Who are just born, being dead.

‘He shall fear, haply, and be dumb: Then will I lay my cheek To his, and tell about our love, Not once abashed or weak:

And the dear Mother will approve My pride, and let me speak. 120

‘Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, To him round whom all souls Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads Bowed with their aureoles: And angels meeting us shall sing To their citherns and citoles.

“There will I ask of Christ the Lord Thus much for him and me:— Only to live as once on earth With Love,—only to be, 130 As then awhile, for ever now Together, I and he.”

She gazed and listened and then said, Less sad of speech than mild,— ‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased. The light thrilled towards her, fill'd With angels in strong level flight. Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path Was vague in distant spheres: And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept. (I heard her tears.)

Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (For a Drawing)

‘Oh loose me! See'st thou not my Bridegroom's face That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss, 10 My hair, my tears He craves to-day:—and oh! What words can tell what other day and place Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His? He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!’

The Passover in the Holy Family (For a Drawing)

The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained, What shadow of Death the Boy's fair brow subdues 10 Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes He deemed himself not worthy to unloose; And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.

The Song of the Bower

Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me? Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour, Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free. Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber, Oh! the last time, and the hundred before: Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember, Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.

Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower, What does it find there that knows it again? 10 There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower, Red at the rent core and dark with the rain. Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,— What waters still image its leaves torn apart? Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it, And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.

What were my prize, could I enter thy bower, This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?

Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower, Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn. 20 Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder!) Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day; My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder, My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.

What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,— My spirit, my body, so fain to be there? Waters engulfing or fires that devour?— Earth heaped against me or death in the air? Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity, The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell; 30 Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city, The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.

Shall I not one day remember thy bower, One day when all days are one day to me?— Thinking, ‘I stirred not, and yet had the power!’— Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’ Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway, So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,— Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way. . . . Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet? 40

Venus Verticordia (For a Picture)

A little space her glance is still and coy; But if she give the fruit that works her spell, 10 Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy. Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell, And her far seas moan as a single shell, And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.

Pandora (For a Picture)

What of the end? These beat their wings at will, The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,— 10 Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited. Aye, clench the casket now! Whither they go Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

Astarte Syriaca (For a Picture)

Torch-bearing her sweet ministers compel All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea 10 The witness of Beauty's face to be: That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell Amulet, talisman, and oracle,— Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.

Proserpina (For a Picture)

Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign: 10 And still some heart unto some soul doth pine, (Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring, Continually together murmuring,)— “Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!”

Appendix 2 - List of Figures

Figure 1 - The Girlhood of Mary Virgin

Fig. 1. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. 1848-9. Tate Britain, London. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s40.rap.html. Accessed 5 January 2019.

Figure 2 - Ecce Ancilla Domini!

Fig. 2. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Ecce Ancilla Domini!. 1849-50. Tate Britain, London. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s44.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 3 - The Blessed Damozel

Fig. 3. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Blessed Damozel. 1875-8. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s244.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 4 - Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee

Fig. 4. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee. 1858. The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s109.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 5 - The Passover in the Holy Family

Fig. 5. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Passover in the Holy Family. 1856. Tate Britain, London. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s78.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 6 - Bocca Baciata

Fig. 6. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Bocca Baciata. 1859. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s114.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 7 - Venus Verticordia

Fig. 7. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Venus Verticordia. 1864-8. Russel-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum/ Bournemouth, UK. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s173.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 8 - Pandora

Fig. 8. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Pandora. 1871. Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library. Rossetti Archive, ww.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s224.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 9 - Astarte Syriaca

Fig. 9. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Astarte Syriaca. 1876-1877. Manchester City Art Galleries. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s249.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Figure 10 - Proserpina

Fig. 10. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Proserpine 1874. Tate Gallery, London. Rossetti Archive, www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s233.r-2.rap.html. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.