Jane Morris was swept into the Pre-Raphaelite world at age eighteen. She was La Belle Iseult to William Morris, who declared “I cannot paint you; but I love you”. Then she was Pandora, Mnemosyne, Astarte Syriaca and other assorted goddesses to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Years later, after the Pre-Raphaelite bloom had faded from her cheeks, we see Jane on canvas again in Evelyn De Morgan’s The Hour Glass (above). Her…
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The Imprisonment of Pia
In 1868, Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted Jane Morris as La Pia de Tolomei. Pia appears in Canto V of Purgatorio in the Divine Comedy. Pia’s story is a sad one. Dante encountered her during his journey through Purgatory, where she remains since she has died without absolution. She says to Dante “remember me, the one who is Pia; Siena made me, Maremma undid me: he…
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Not in thy body is thy life at all
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s sonnet Life-in-Love fascinates me, especially when read with knowledge of two great loves in his life: Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris. The first two lines suggest that his deceased lover’s life has somehow migrated into the body of his new love: Not in thy body is thy life at all/But in this lady’s lips and hands…
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Signs of Life
In 1865, Dante Gabriel Rossetti orchestrated a series of images of Jane Morris to be photographed by John Robert Parsons. While they are all interesting and beautiful to me, my favorite is the one above for one reason: that scarf. There’s a gauzy scarf that is seen repeatedly in Rossetti’s works. Here’s just a few examples: The reason I love…
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In a World of Her Own
I’ve seen Pre-Raphaelite paintings of women dismissed as ‘languid’ or ‘vapid’ and many critics view them as sensual images created solely for the male gaze. That’s a fair argument, but I feel it’s a point of view that barely scratches the surface. To me, Pre-Raphaelite women are not shallow objects of beauty, but women focused more on their…
