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Rossetti's 'For Our Lady of the Rocks": An Examination of Pre-Raphaelite Beliefs

Vilayath and Lance

Picture
Our Lady of the Rocks (1503-1506)
By Leonardo Da Vinci
For 'Our Lady of the Rocks' By Leonardo Da Vinci.
For 'Our Lady of the Rocks' By Leonardo Da Vinci.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
In the 19th century, a group of artists created a style and aesthetic movement that challenged the dominant notions of beauty. This group would come to be known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  This exhibit will discuss how the use of ekphrastic poetry, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s For ‘Our Lady of the Rocks’, illuminates Rossetti’s Pre-Raphaelite ideals; ideals that not only challenged established art, but would influence an entire new lens through which art could be viewed.  This essay will prove that Rossetti’s poem, based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting Our Lady of the Rocks, highlights Pre-Raphaelite beliefs that question beauty by exploring the paradigm of beauty and morbidity.  This will be accomplished through an analysis of ekphrastic poetry and how it enabled Rossetti to write about these attitudes that were emerging for the Brotherhood that would come some years later. The discussion will also include an in-depth analysis of the set of beliefs that the Pre-Raphaelites had towards art, and Rossetti’s sonnet will be compared with the imagery of Da Vinci’s painting. Thus, a clear example of how the Pre-Raphaelites viewed the world and how they accomplished making artistic choices based on these perceptions will be provided in the course of this exhibit.
Picture
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (March, 1847)
Self-Portrait

Ekphrastic poetry and how it enabled Rossetti to express his impressions of  Da Vinci’s painting must be analyzed in order to introduce the Pre-Raphaelite notions that not only influenced aesthetic tastes in Victorian society, but also influenced contemporary society’s outlook on art. The ekphrastic spectator, as Benton states, reads poems , “which, in turn are reading paintings or sculptures; and maybe, doing so from the position of knowing the visual work before the poem; or maybe, of coming to it as a result of the poem; or maybe, of ‘reading’ the visual work through or alongside or against the poem’s ‘reading’ of it”.


Rossetti's 'For Our Lady of the Rocks": An Examination of Pre-Raphaelite Beliefs

Vilayath and Lance

Picture
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The ekphrastic poem acts as a literary medium for a visual piece of art.  The poet chooses to convey not only their interpretation of the visual, but their perspective of the sensual feelings from the work as well.  ‘Choice’ is an important word to note because it highlights the fact that the poet includes and excludes certain information about the visual work that they feel is important in order to convey a particular reading; it is not simply a regurgitation of the visual work in literary form.  This ‘choice’ is very important to understanding Rossetti and his Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  The Pre-Raphaelites challenged the established “academic” understanding of visual art, an understanding that succeeded the artist Raphael, hence their name Pre-Raphaelite.  They felt the common and frequent compositions, which many artists of their time worked according to, numbed the public to accept this stale and stationary position in which visual art was stuck in.  The brotherhood formed from individuals that sought to challenge and reject those “academic” notions. The expression of this hope for a new perspective of beauty was conveyed in their work that followed. 

In Rossetti’s poem For ‘Our Lady of the Rocks’, several of these choices are made. First of all, Rossetti explicitly states that the work is an ekphrastic poem based on the painting by including its title in his own.  Although a small and seemingly insignificant choice, there is much to be said about this selection.  Since the poem is “for” the painting, there a deep show of respect for Da Vinci’s work.  He is promoting Da Vinci’s work first, explicitly stating his reference and influence.  In order for people to understand his work, they must escape the current mode that disgusted Rossetti and must reach back to the past to reignite the spark that creates and appreciates beauty no matter what form it comes in.  By doing this, the artistic community can take what they learn from those artists and re-establish them in their contemporary social consciousness

In regard to the choice of poem, it is important to note that Da Vinci was quite literally Pre-Raphael, thus fulfilling the Pre-Raphaelite nature of his poem.  Moreover, Da Vinci was a famous, household artist who was widely recognized.This idea is further emphasized with the fact that Rossetti wrote this poem after viewing the painting in the National Gallery in London.  The Brotherhood hoped to influence not a small group peers, but an entire following.  Much of their disgust stemmed from the disregard and treatment of late, great artists; artists who were highly influential and famous.  It was these great artists who, The Brotherhood felt, were being publicly shamed by the Academy’s stale, limited and passionless view of beauty and artistic taste.  Da Vinci’s painting was in display at the National Academy, and after viewing it, Rossetti wrote his poem.  He chose a famous artist, a household name, a work people can see for themselves, to remind the public that these great artists of the past should not and cannot be stuck in the academy’s stale understanding of their work.  They must be revisited and more creatively re-imagined.  Rossetti, along with the brotherhood, wanted to change the way people understood what art could represent. Thus, it is logical that he chose to write about art that people would know and can see firsthand.  It is apparent that part of Rossetti’s motivation for his work was in conjunction with the Brotherhood and his passion to change the hearts of his artistic society, but the influences on his own work were just as important as the influences for his cause.

Rossetti and his likeminded peers did not necessarily need to go hundreds of years into the past in search of influential artists who agreed with them. As Ormond states, the Rossetti brothers together bought one of William Blake’s notebooks@, and found that he shared the same distaste for the Royal Academy as they did, going on to state Blake “would certainly have joined the Pre-Raphaelites ‘anti-slosh’ campaign”@. This was a very important time for Rossetti because it reaffirmed and gave credence to the Brotherhood’s stand. Blake was a poet that Rossetti held in high regard, and to share a seemingly coincidental yet strong and passionate outlook with such a well established and respected poet fuelled Rossetti’s mission. Moreover, Rossetti himself saw himself in some respects an outcast and introvert as illustrated in the question-filled, cerebral nature of his poems, and may have found motivation in sharing causes with a poet that Ormond describes as “the great outsider of the previous generation”. Rossetti would pursue this Blakean position with his peers and eventually develop his own unique perspective and position in the same fashion as he preached for artistic society.
Picture
William Blake

Rossetti's 'For Our Lady of the Rocks": An Examination of Pre-Raphaelite Beliefs

Vilayath and Lance

In Rossetti’s ekphrastic art based off of Leonardo Da Vinci’s, one may be able to view many processes being shown. For one thing, the content on display in Da Vinci’s art is co-opted by Rossetti, who draws an arguably different inspiration from the content than either Leonardo or any of his contemporaries may have either intended or gotten from the painting. The Madonna was a revered and holy biblical figure, a cherished image that gave a chaste, impossible birth to the Messiah, which was a happy and wondrous miracle. Rossetti’s gaze, however, morphs these impressions, and results in his wording of the Madonna as being a sad person, a figure caught in a sort of underworld, suffering forever in this picture under the gaze of what he considers an “occult”. Rossetti’s twists the meaning of Heaven, changing it into merely a “long day”, a pessimistic view of what Christians hold dear as being salvation. To Rossetti, Christ lays his blessings “silently”, because he is victim to the same vices, foibles, and human faults as the rest of humanity. “Even Jesus would get bored of eternity,” Rossetti seems to be conveying. Indeed, one should note how the tone of Da Vinci’s work changes before and after the impressions laid out in Rossetti’s sonnet.
Picture
Leonardo da Vinci
Self-Portrait
For Rossetti, this process of twisting the meaning of the original artist is not one of heresy, but was an important mission. Already frustrated with the “academic” work of the artists at the Academy, Rossetti wished to break from the typical pursuits of the day. He regarded this body of work as devoid of life, without passion, and lacking in substance and purpose as a result. Drawing inspiration from William Blake’s words from a journal he purchased with his brother, Rossetti’s tribute to Our Lady of the Rocks is an important process in itself, because it does not seek to alter the original work itself. Instead, it sees the original as important and should remain immobile; the perception of it is what needs to change. This transformation is particularly fascinating, given that Da Vinci’s heavy use of shadows was particularly gloomy under this sudden perspective shift. Under Rossetti’s gaze, Madonna’s previously luminescent and mirthful face is altered to resemble the firm, taut line that her lips actually show in the painting. The baby Jesus is now simply another human possibility, hoping to fulfill its duties, despite the painful lessons that need to be learned on the way. 

Picture
Lady Lilith (1868)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Another process at work here is the laying out for the foundation of what the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood meant to set out on in their collective work. At the time, Rossetti was merely in the beginning stages of setting out what it was he wanted to accomplish, and would one day join other of his contemporaries in attempting to materialize. This purpose, as is hinted at in the sonnet, was a concept that would endure throughout the period of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The focus of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, along with the other artists in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was on the paradigm of beauty and morbidity. This was a feature that can be seen in various works by this group of artists, such as Ophelia by John Everett Millais and Lady Lilith by Rossetti. The former painting, of a drowned lady awash in murky waters, was an attempt by Millais to capture how a woman could still be beautiful, perhaps even more so, in death. This is an example of trying to bring beauty to a normally disturbing, unpleasant concept: death. Rossetti’s painting of Lady Lilith, on the other hand, is of a woman who is brushing her hair. The lady herself is, according to mythology, the first woman to appear to the biblical figure of Adam, but was cast away when her evils nearly destroyed him. This is another example of how the Pre-Raphaelites tried to make a comparison between the beautiful and the morbid. In many cases, it was the beauty of form that uplifted the morose material. In other cases, it was the sad, longing brushwork that altered normally picturesque or beautiful content into a more hushed response from the audience.


Rossetti's 'For Our Lady of the Rocks": An Examination of Pre-Raphaelite Beliefs

Vilayath and Lance

The shadows, gloom, and underworld aspect that Rossetti illustrates are a direct attempt at changing meaning. The ekphrastic was a way of accomplishing this task, of making the meaning of something change. That which already exists, for Rossetti, can still be revisited, and perhaps altered. This is what Rossetti’s sonnet is addressing, the need for the audience, the optimistic and unemotional cultish mass, to congregate in the harsh gloom of life, with all of its unattractive aspects. Those who would see something in only one holy light are at risk of creating a false, faulty image of the content. It is this lack of sincerity, of honesty, that is so damaging for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

It was this process of bonding the breathing together with the dying, the beautiful and the morbid, which reflected the main obsession of these great painters and writers. The paradigm that they saw was no longer at odds; under their brushwork and poetry, it was united as an inescapable concept of life itself. It was, for them, something that needed to be celebrated, and humbly accepted as well. This was the purpose of the Pre-Raphaelites, one that can be seen in their final works. More importantly, this essay has shown how these concepts are in their germination period in the poetry that Rossetti wrote for the painting of the Madonna. Furthermore, this enables the scholar a window into the process of the pursuit of the beauty/morbidity paradigm and how Rossetti embarked on that path.

In conclusion, this exhibit has highlighted the various processes in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti exercised  his artistic views and passions.  His method, the use of ekphrastic poetry coupled with constant discussions of the paradigm of beauty and morbidity, illustrate his own inner questioning of the divine and mortality, a struggle that was greatly portrayed within the tensions of his work.  These tensions sprung from his public effort to reject the academic perspective of art and recreate an understanding of art that explored and broke free of the boundaries the Victorian artistic society considered of good artistic taste.  Paying great respect and reverence to the celebrated artist before Raphael, Rossetti was also motivated by the shared perspective of prominent artists of his own time, namely William Blake, a point that would reaffirm his position and encourage him to continue his cause.  In his association with a brotherhood of likeminded artists and poets, Rossetti developed a perspective which fulfilled his goals of changing the established understanding of art to make way for a community unafraid to view, create, and redefine beauty and art.
Picture
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Rossetti's 'For Our Lady of the Rocks": An Examination of Pre-Raphaelite Beliefs

Vilayath and Lance

Endnotes

1 Ormond, Leonee. "Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Old Masters." Yearbook of English Studies. 36.2 (2006): 153-168. Print. Page 155.

2 Ibid.

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