Pre-Raphaelite Women, Art, & Poetry, Part A

Pre-Raphaelite Women:

D.G. Rossetti & the Male Gaze

"One face looks out from all his canvases....
He feeds upon her face by day and night."

--'In an Artist's Studio' (poem) by C. Rossetti

Index

D.G. Rossetti: Life & Themes
Blessed Damozel: Poem/Painting
More Doubled Paintings/Poems
Other Poems/Paintings/Criticism

D. G. Rossetti's Life and Themes

Self-Portrait
by D.G. Rossetti

Biographies, Backgrounds, Overviews:

Biography --plus links to a couple dozen Rossetti poems.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Overview (Victorian Web)--biography and many other categories.
Pre-Raphaelite Overview (Victorian Web) --many helpful links.
Rossetti Archive --many links to the complete writings and pictures of DG Rossetti; advanced searches possible.

Ecce Ancilla Domini
Model:Christina
Rossetti

Beata Beatrix
Model:
Lizzie Siddal

Astarte Syriaca
Model:
Jane Morris

Literary/Artistic Representations of Women & "The Gaze"

Pre-Raphaelite Women and Rosetti's Fair Lady--two Victorian Web short essays on Rossetti's ideal and real women.
Rossetti, Religion, and Women: Spirituality Through Feminine Beauty --excellent student paper on Rossett's obsession with his ideal "Fair Lady." (Victorian Web).
Mothers and Madonnas--the Siddal-Virgin Mary paintings (Victorian Web).
The Femme Fatale as Object and Artistic Portrayals of the Femme Fatale--two short, related essays on the "dangerous woman" image (Victorian Web).
Consuming Bodies: Pornology, Textualization, and the Rossetti Woman --Zox-Weaver's interesting abstract.
The Pre-Raphaelite Women--good opening questions about Rossetti's images of women; images of paintings also included.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti--links to background information, images of Arthurian subjects (including woodcut engravings), paintings of a range of Rossetti women, questions about the image being projected.
The Rossettian Dream --a particularly good discussion of his women themes and other themes (Victorian Web).
Rossetti's Dreaming Women: Three Pictures of Visions and Imagining --helpful commentary on three Rossetti images: Beata Beatrix, Helen of Troy, and The Blessed Damozel (Victorian Web).
Camille Paglia on Pre-Raphaelite Art--sometimes insightful, sometimes outrageous, but always interesting, Paglia has a great deal to say about sex, nature, and "decadent" PRB artists' images of women. Some discussion of models like Lizzie Siddal.

The Masculine Gaze: Related Theoretical Studies

FAQ: What is the "male gaze"? --introductory essay.
4 Ways To Challenge The Male Gaze--excellent feminist analysis for the general reader.
John Berger's "Ways of Seeing"--classic essay.
Why we still need John Berger’s Ways of Seeing --helpful discussion of Berger's analysis of the female figure in art and advertising; includes a 30 min. video of Berger's ideas.
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema-- Laura Mulvey's famous psychoanalytic analysis of the gendered gaze of the camera in cinema and in spectatorship.
Laura Mulvey on Film Spectatorship--notes on this seminal essay.
Elizabeth Abele's The Feminine Gaze--good example analyzing famous films.
The Pre-Raphaelite Body--good analysis of the "pre-raphaelite gaze."
Aesthetics, Exploitation and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement --"Although the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood reconceptualised artistic licence by exploiting models for their art, it could be suggested that these models were portrayed in the paintings as 'seductive rather than oppressed' to suggest that these women were 'asking for it' rather than the Brotherhood being seen as sexist."

The Blessed Damozel: Poem/Painting

Blessed Damozel by D.G. Rossetti
View details: predella & "heaven."

The Blessed Damozel
(Selection)

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 a service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.

The Blessed Damozel --the complete text of the poem; here is another copy.

A Study Guide--background and study questions.

The Spiritual Depths of the Feminine Soul in Rossetti's 'The Blessed Damozel' and Parallel Imagery in 'The Blessed Damozel' --two short Victorian Web essays.

Pre-Raphaelite Women: Questions--outline study questions about Rossetti's image of women in the poem "Blessed Damozel" and in his paintings (many examples).

Who Is the Blessed Damozel? --good background and analysis.

More Doubled Paintings/Poems

A Sea-Spell by D. G. Rossetti

The Sea-Spell

Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell,
The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.
But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?
What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,
In answering echoes from what planisphere,
Along the wind, along the estuary?

She sinks into her spell: and when full soon
Her lips move and she soars into her song,
What creatures of the midmost main shall throng
In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune:
Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,
And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die?

Lady Lilith (or Body's Beauty)
by D.G. Rossetti
(Copy of Rossetti's "Lilith"
poem available at this link.)

Lilith: Poem & Painting

Lady Lilith: Doubleworks Exhibit--copy of poem and painting; scholarly commentary; several versions of the painting.
The Modern Lilith--short analysis of Rossetti's painting on Victorian Web.
The Power of the Seductress: Lady Lilith--short analysis on Victorian Web.
Rossetti's Lady Lilith: Power and Painting--short analysis on Victorian Web.
A Dialectic of Beauty in Rossetti's Lady Lilith-- excellent student discussion on Victorian Web.
'Sibylla Palmifera', Dante Gabriel Rossetti --the "Soul's Beauty" painting/poem that forms a pair with "Body's Beauty" (Lady Lilith).
Identifying a Transformation: Images of Lilith in the Poetry and Art of Dante Gabriel Rossetti --excellent feminist chapter on Rossetti's Lilith; see more links at bottom of the page.
Beauty and the Beast: Rossetti's Double Victorian Lilith and Contradictory Text-Image Relations--scholarly discussion of Lilith poem and paintings.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Lady Lilith, Sibylla Palmifera, "Body's Beauty," and "Soul's Beauty"--scholarly article.
Degeneration--wide-ranging and well-illustrated discussion of the various sources and implications of the Lilith image.
Muse Turned 'Femme Fatale' in D. G. Rossetti’s Painting and Poetry--scholarly, detailed discussion of the Lilith poem and paintings.
Lilith Web Page--which has just about anything you ever wanted to know about her.
Isis, Lilith, Gello: Three Ladies of Darkness--and here is the rest of the story not covered in many sources.

Proserpine (Persephone): Poem & Painting

Proserpine (Rossetti painting)--good backgroung and historical information on Rossetti's painting; his Proserpine poem is also included.
Longing and Connection in D.G. Rossetti's Proserpine --short Victorian Web essay.
Proserpine and Jane Morris: Women Trapped in Unhappy Relationships --short Victorian Web essay.
Proserpine--Rossetti's explanation of what he was doing in the Persephone (Proserpine) painting.
Chapter four: Persephone/Demeter/Hecate --Persephone as part of the "triple goddess"; her "history."
Who Is Hecate?--a re-reading of the "dark goddess" often associated with Persephone (Proserpine).
Queen of the Night--informative discussion of the various goddesses associated with Persephone (Proserpine).
Persephone--images of the goddess from ancient time to modern times (including Rossetti's famous image of Persephone--see the image in the left margin of this page).

Astarte Syriaca: Poem & Painting

The Earthly Paradise--image and poem about Rossetti's Astarte Syriaca.
Astarte Syriaca: The Epitome of the Rossettian Pre-Raphaelite Love Goddess --short essay on Rossetti's Venus painting/poem.
Astarte Syriaca--lots of information and images of this painting, plus scholarly commentary on it.

Prostitutes and Fallen Women: Poems & Paintings

Jenny--e-text of Rossetti's poem 'Jenny.'
The Male Voyeur in D.G. Rossetti's 'Jenny' --short Victorian Web essay.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Jenny' --short essay.
'The Potter's Power over the Clay' in Rossetti's 'Jenny' --short Victorian Web essay.
D.G. Rossetti's "Jenny": Eschewing Thinking for Feeling--short Victorian Web essay.
Scenes of Reading in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Jenny'--short Victorian Web esay.
Early and Mid-Victorian Attitudes towards Prostitution --prostitution and sexual morality in Victorian law and society (Victorian Web).
Rossetti's "Jenny": Aestheticizing the Whore--scholarly essay.
Victorian Ethics in Pre-Raphaelite Art: Depiction of the Fatale Fall of Femme--scholarly article exploring "the ideas of womanhood betrayed by love and condemned by male chauvinism."
Possible Lines of Approach Rossetti and Women--helpful suggestions for various approaches to Rossetti's painting/poem.
Fallen Women in Victorian Art--essay, includes commentary on Rossetti's poem "Found" (Victorian Web).
Found (painting)--scholarly commentary.
Hidden Iconography in Found by Dante Gabriel Rossetti --short Victorian Web essay.
Found--commentary on Rossetti's poem and painting.

Found by D.G. Rossetti.

Found

"There is a budding morrow in midnight:"--
So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
In London's smokeless resurrection-light,
Dark breaks to dawn. But o'er the deadly blight
Of Love deflowered and sorrow of none avail,
Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
Can day from darkness ever again take flight?

Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge
In gloaming courtship? And, O God! to-day
He only knows he holds her; - but what part
Can life now take? She cries in her locked heart,--
"Leave me -- I do not know you -- go away!"

Other Poems/Paintings/Criticism

Rossetti Poems--e-texts.

Rossetti paintings at the Tate Gallery--over 100 images.

The Sonnet (A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument)--poem/picture to his mother. This article is an excellent example of close-reading, as well as providing some insight into Rossetti's views on poetry.

The Germ, Issue #1: Thoughts Toward Nature in Poetry, Literature, and Art --Issue 1 of the famous Pre-Raphaelite journal. See also: The Germ, Issue #2 and The Germ, Issue #3 and The Germ, Issue #4.