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Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
Venus Verticordia, 1864-1868.
Oil on canvas, 98 x 70 cm.
Russel-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth.
Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris
and John Henry Dearle (design)
and Morris & Co. (production),
Holy Grail Tapestry - Quest for the
Holy Grail Tapestries - The Arming
and Departure of the Knights, 1895-1896.
High warp tapestry, wool and silk weft
on cotton warp, 244 x 360 cm.
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Birmingham.
Edward Burne-Jones,
The Golden Stairs, 1880.
Oil on canvas, 269.2 x 116.8 cm.
Tate Britain, London.
The battlefield that they chose was the illustration of Keats famous poem Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil. This mournful story based on Boccaccio is well known: Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel was the sister of two rich Florentine merchants. In their house, under their command, was the young Lorenzo, who like all heroes was quite handsome. The young man and the young woman could not in the self-same mansion dwell, without some stir of heart, some malady. They could not sit at meals but feel how well it soothed each to be the other by. They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep, but to each other dream, and nightly weep. Isabels brothers quickly noticed the drama that was unfolding before their eyes. As they wished to marry their sister to some great lord, and as they lived in that period well loved by poets when one did not back away from even the most dreadful undertakings, they resolved to murder Lorenzo. One fine morning, they asked him to go hunting near the Apennines, ere the hot sun count his dewy rosary on the eglantine. They hurried off, passed the Arno, and in a neighbouring forest, killed Lorenzo and buried him deep in the earth.
Upon their return, they explained that the young man had set sail quickly for a foreign country because of some pressing need. Isabel asked them if he would return soon, but got no reply, and they deceived her every day with new stories.
Finally, she had a dream that revealed the truth to her. In it appeared Lorenzo, who said to her: Isabel, my sweet! Red whortleberries droop above my head, and a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet; Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed their leaves and prickly nuts. When morning came, she ran to the forest with her old nurse. Her eyes fell upon the knife that had been used in the murder. The two women dug and dug, and found the corpse. Then, the distraught lover, wanting to keep something of the dead man at any price, cut off his head and carried it back home with her. There she embalmed it and hid it in a flowerpot, under a basil plant that was kept green by her endless tears. From then on, she neglected everything and cared only for her beloved basil. Day and night, she cried over the plant, which grew and flowered wondrously. This astonished her brothers, who looked to see what was under the basil, and though the thing was vile with green and livid spot, they recognised Lorenzos head. Appalled, they fled their homeland, carrying away what remained of their victim. But as soon as she no longer had her beloved plant, Isabel fell ill and wasted away. And finally she died, mournfully asking everyone else who approached her and pilgrims returning from faraway lands, what had become of her basil-pot.
Edward Burne-Jones,
The Challenge in the Desert, 1894-1898.
Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 96.5 cm.
Collection Lord Lloyd-Webber.
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale,
The Wise Virgins, 1901.
Two watercolours on one canvas, upper panel:
37 x 30 cm; lower panel: 11 x 30 cm.
Christopher Wood Gallery, London.
This was the drama from which each of the Pre-Raphaelites was expected to depict a scene, rigorously applying the theories of their new school: no imitation of the masters, no generalisation, each figure reproduced from a model and from one single model, outlines as original and individual as possible, painting on an unprepared white canvas, and fastidious attention to detail. In a word, earnestness. But, while Rossetti continued talking away and Hunt prepared by meticulously studying every detail of his subject, Millais had already constructed, sketched out, and finished his painting. For the Exhibition of 1849, in which all three of them participated together, only Millais produced a work inspired by Keats.[12]
This work depicts Isabella and Lorenzo seated together at the table, where he is offering her half an orange on a plate. Across from them, on the other side of the table, the two brothers, one cracking a nut and the other lifting his glass to his lips, cast suspicious glances toward the couple. The closest one reaches out to kick Isabellas hound, and this forces the poor beast to cower against the knees of its mistress. Most of the guests in Lorenzo and Isabella are eating or drinking, without paying any attention to one another. It looks as though this is a table at an inn. If lovers were able to notice anything apart from each other, Isabella and Lorenzo would have seen the salt cellar overturned on the table, a sinister omen! Behind them, an attentive servant stands with his towel draped over his arm, watching over their banquet. The costumes are those of Florence around the fourteenth century. Hunt declared that this was the most astonishing painting by a twenty- year-old youth that that the world had ever seen, and perhaps he was right. In it, the theories of their school had been scrupulously followed, though by chance. Each figure was painted after a model, and after a single model. Every fold, every wrinkle in the fabric had been reproduced by observing nature. Each vein of the hands, each reflection on a fingernail, and each gleam of light had been copied from reality, neglecting nothing, selecting nothing. Thus, each character was a portrait: Isabella that of Mrs Hodgkinson, the wife of Millais half-brother, and Lorenzo that of William Rossetti, who had quite an Italian appearance. The brother who is about to drink is a portrait of Dante Rossetti, and the old invitee who is wiping his lips with a serviette is that of William Bell Scott, a great friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, a mediocre poet, and a poor painter. He left one painting (The Eve of the Deluge in the National Gallery), some etchings, and two volumes of his memoirs. He was an eclectic character, and his persistence in wanting to convert minds as resistant as those of Hunt and Rossetti to materialism was amusing.