The Wounded Dove

The Wounded Dove, painted by Rebecca Solomon, is a painting that resonates with me deeply. The dove’s wing appears broken and I don’t know if the poor creature is accepting of the help being offered or if it struggles against those cradling hands. Hurt and frightened, the only things that can possibly help are time, … Read more

Birds in the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

While from the quivering bough the bird expands His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands (from A Vision of Fiammetta, Dante Gabriel Rossetti) Birds appear frequently in both Rossetti’s paintings and poems.  In the late 1860s, after his wife Elizabeth Siddal’s  death, Rossetti began to be plagued by health and mental problems. A chaffinch landed … Read more

Dante Gabriel Rossetti illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven

Who doesn’t love Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven?  A masterful poem of mourning, loss and visitation in which the poem’s speaker is grief-stricken with the death of his beloved Lenore and is haunted by memories.  Enter the raven with his repetitive message “Nevermore”!   Dante Gabriel Rossetti drew his illustration of  The Raven around 1848, … Read more

Sunset Wings

Having just mentioned this poem in the post La Pia de Tolomei, I found it fitting to choose Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem Sunset Wings as the poem of the week. According to this page at the Rossetti Archive, the poems most striking images focus on a flock of starlings that DGR noticed during his sojourn … Read more