| Pia de' Tolomei | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
| Year | c. 1868 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 105.4 cm× 120.6 cm(41.5 in× 47.5 in) |
| Location | Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas |
Pia de' Tolomei is an oil painting on canvas by English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted around 1868 and now in the Spencer Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
This work was painted at the start of Rossetti's affair with Jane Morris, who modelled for the picture. As he was to do with Beata Beatrix (1870), Rossetti chose a tale by Dante Aligheri (from Purgatorio ) to illustrate his love for his model. The story tells of a woman whose husband imprisoned and later poisoned her: [1] Rossetti wanted the world to believe the fantasy with which he was deluding himself – that William Morris kept Jane against her will. He continued this theme, as shown in Proserpine . [2]
Rossetti not only drew Jane exhaustively, he also choreographed photographic sessions of her and used the photographs as preliminary sketches for drawings. Amongst other representations of her, Rossetti depicts Jane as Proserpine, Queen Guinevere and Desdemona – all of whom were at the mercy of men. [3]
Jane appears disproportionately large in most of Rossetti's pictures. The background is immaterial as long as the viewer focuses on the beauty of her face. In Pia de' Tolomei her elongated neck seems almost dislocated, and the whiteness of her skin shines out, defying the viewer to pay attention to any other aspects of the painting. Morris' hair colour is misrepresented in the painting. Her natural colour was dark brown, yet Rossetti paints it with an auburn tinge – closer to Lizzie Siddal's hair colour than Morris'. Also, her hands are twisted and intertwined in a peculiar way. [4]
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, art model, and poet. Siddal was perhaps the most significant of the female models who posed for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their ideas of female beauty were fundamentally influenced and personified by her. Walter Deverell and William Holman Hunt painted Siddal, and she was the model for John Everett Millais's famous painting Ophelia (1852). Early in her relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siddal became his muse and exclusive model, and he portrayed her in almost all his early artwork depicting women.
Jane Morris was an English embroiderer in the Arts and Crafts movement and an artists' model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to her husband William Morris and to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her sister was the embroiderer and teacher Elizabeth Burden.
"The Blessed Damozel" is perhaps the best known poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as the title of his painting illustrating the subject. The poem was first published in 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ. Rossetti subsequently revised the poem twice and republished it in 1856, 1870 and 1873.
Bocca Baciata (1859) is a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti which represents a turning point in his career. It was the first of his pictures of single female figures, and established the style that was later to become a signature of his work. The model was Fanny Cornforth, the principal inspiration for Rossetti's sensuous figures.
The Oxford Union murals (1857–1859) are a series of mural decorations in the Oxford Union library building. The series was executed by a team of Pre-Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The paintings depict scenes from Arthurian myth.
The Tristram and Isoude stained glass panels are a series of 13 small stained-glass windows made in 1862 by Morris, Marshall, Faulker & Co. for Harden Grange, the house of textile merchant Walter Dunlop, near Bingley in Yorkshire, England. Depicting the legend of Tristan and Iseult, they were designed by six of the leading Pre-Raphaelite artists of the day, to an overall design by William Morris. They were acquired in 1917 by Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, which is now part of Bradford Museums & Galleries. They can be seen on display at Cliffe Castle, Keighley.
Alexa Wilding was one of the favourite models of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, featuring in some of his finest paintings of the later 1860s and 1870s. She sat for more of his finished works than any other of his more well-known muses, including Elizabeth Siddall, Jane Morris and Fanny Cornforth.
Found is an unfinished oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, now in the Delaware Art Museum. The painting is Rossetti's only treatment in oil of a contemporary moral subject, urban prostitution, and although the work remained incomplete at Rossetti's death in 1882, he always considered it one of his most important works, returning to it many times from the mid-1850s until the year before his death.
Ecce Ancilla Domini, or The Annunciation, is an oil painting by the English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, first painted in 1850 and now in Tate Britain in London. The Latin title is a quotation from the Vulgate text of the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint Luke, describing the Annunciation, where Mary accepts the message brought to her by the Angel Gabriel that she would give birth to a child (Jesus) by God.
The Beloved is an oil painting on canvas by the English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), now in Tate Britain, London. Rossetti signed his initials and the date as "1865-6" on the bottom left of the canvas. It depicts the bride, or "beloved", from the Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible as she approaches her bridegroom, with her attendants.
Proserpine is an oil painting on canvas by English artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted in 1874 and now in Tate Britain. Rossetti began work on the painting in 1871 and painted at least eight separate versions, the last only completed in 1882, the year of his death. Early versions were promised to Charles Augustus Howell. The painting discussed in this article is the so-called seventh version commissioned by Frederick Richards Leyland, now at the Tate Gallery, with the very similar final version now at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Paolo and Francesca da Rimini is a watercolour by British artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted in 1855 and now in Tate Britain.
Love and the Maiden is an oil painting on canvas by English Pre-Raphaelite artist John Roddam Spencer Stanhope that is currently housed at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Veronica Veronese is an oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted in 1872 with Alexa Wilding as the model. The painting was conceived as a companion to Lady Lilith. Rossetti sold the painting to one of his best clients, shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland. In 1923 it was acquired by the estate of Samuel Bancroft which donated it in 1935 to the Delaware Art Museum.
Monna Rosa is the title of two oil paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, both portraits of Frances Leyland, the wife of shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland, a regular patron of Rossetti. The earlier and smaller painting was completed in 1862 and its whereabouts is now unknown. The second was completed in 1867 and is now in a private collection.
Water Willow is an 1871 oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It depicts Jane Morris in the river landscape near Kelmscott Manor, with the manor in the left background and Kelmscott Church below the hill to the right.
The Girlhood of Mary Virgin is an 1849 oil on canvas painting by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, measuring 83.2 by 65.4 cm and now in the collection of Tate Britain, to which it was bequeathed in 1937 by Agnes Jekyll. It was his first completed oil painting and is signed "Dante Gabriele Rossetti P.R.B. 1849". He first exhibited it at the 'Free Exhibition' at the Hyde Park Corner Gallery.
Ligeia Siren is a chalk drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (DGR) that was completed in 1873. The painting depicts a siren, a creature from classic Greek mythology, that also appear in tales such as Homer's Odyssey or Virgil's Georgics. The drawing is predominantly inspired from Rossetti's own 1869 libretto The Doom of the Sirens with which Ligeia is one of the female leads. Instead of depicting the traditional encounter of the siren with her victims entranced by her beauty and powers of music, doomed to a terrible fate, as in The Siren (1900) by John William Waterhouse or Ulysses and the Sirens (1909) by Herbert James Draper. Rossetti depicts a timeless moment, where contrary to his depiction of her in his libretto, she appears tranquil and relatively innocuous to her intended victims in the background.
